


Dust

by levelone



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Banter, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Modern Kravitz describes himself as a minimalist, Modern Taako mostly does freelance work, Modern with science that seems like magic, Multi, Multiple romances - no jealousy, Relationship Negotiation, Sexual Content, Slow Burn, There's something shady about the BOB, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-01-25 17:47:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 32,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12537664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levelone/pseuds/levelone
Summary: It was supposed to be simple: Taako was on TV, and Kravitz is a writer here for some pull quotes. Instead, when they meet in an empty diner in the middle of a desert, Taako says something impossible—and Kravitz believes him.





	1. Chapter 1

When Kravitz parks his rental car outside a diner with no sign, all he can do is hope he has the right address. Besides a few discount stores, most shuttered for the day, all that surrounds him is unending desert darkening as the sun sets. He lost all the bars on his phone miles ago—not like the man he’s here to interview would likely offer much help, even if he could text him. The last few messages he’s traded with Taako, semi-beloved former reality show contestant, were vague at best.

“Flying into NM tomorrow. Where should I meet you?”

Taako responded with cactus, sparkle.

Kravitz: “Maybe you could pick me up?”

Smirk emoji.

Kravitz had rolled his eyes. “Thinking I’ll rent a car at the airport. I get in around 6, and I’ll call you after to work out the details.”

Taako responded hours later with an address and a selfie of him in front of what looks like this diner, winking over his sunglasses.

 

When Kravitz walks in, the place is empty except for one man sitting several tables away, both arms slung over the back of his booth. Low rays of sun spark in the frizz of his hair and the red glitter in the vinyl seat beneath his denim cut-offs.

“Kravitz, right? You asked, I came.”

“Based on our most recent texts, I think _you_ asked, Taako,” Kravitz says.

“Even better the other way around,” Taako smirks.

He stands up as Kravitz stops at the table, grabbing the single suitcase slung over his shoulder and dropping it in his own booth. Kravitz can’t tell whether he’s being polite or taking it hostage. He notices the backs of Taako’s thighs are dented red from the seam at the edge of the seat; he’s been waiting here a while, though Kravitz has a feeling he wouldn’t admit it.

“The rest of your bags in the car, my dude?” Taako asks archly, and Kravitz chuckles.

“I travel light.”

Kravitz only packs one suitcase when he goes on assignment, now, as a rule; he’s edited his former closet down to a monochromatic, tailored wardrobe he can recycle endlessly and still look a cut above most places he ends up. At this point, he’s on the road enough that he’s narrowed most parts of his life down to the essentials, very little holding him back from settling into new towns and following each tug of the story he finds there.

 

While he’s distracted setting up his phone to record their conversation, Taako orders for them both: pancakes, overeasy eggs, bacon ( _but don’t burn the fuck out of it like last time_ ). Kravitz starts with the obvious question: what it was like competing against 24 other men and women, on camera, for the heart of Magnus Burnsides?

Taako answers so easily that glassy syrup has started to harden on his half-eaten plate of pancakes before Kravitz notices he’s not saying much of anything, just circling the questions. On TV, Taako was a flash of color and catchphrases; here, he has the same quickness—twisting Kravitz’ words without effort, which Kravitz has to admit he likes—but it is clear he’s trying to distract from something below.

As Taako glances at the mug he’s holding precisely between his palms, Kravitz’ eyes linger on the thin line of blue drawn around his eyes. He imagines him, in the dim light of this morning, smudging the color into his lashes with one finger … and as he lingers on the image, he begins to feel like an intruder, as if he were actually sitting on this stranger’s bed and watching him get ready. But he’s just doing his job as a writer, he tells himself—collecting details, letting his mind fill in the gaps—and there are so many gaps in the man across from him, who is not at all what Kravitz expected. He thinks back through the last few minutes of tape in his mind, and he can’t find any pull quotes: a few outrageous comments, sure, but they seemed somehow experimental, tailored to gauge how Kravitz reacted. And Kravitz never presents quotes out of context. He begins to ponder his draft turning into a dead-end navel-gazing piece about a journalist being batted around by his subject.

Taako seems to sense him retreating into his own head as their conversation falls into silence. After a moment, he looks up at Kravitz, smiling sarcastically. “As a journalist, I thought you’d be better at—talking to people?”

The retort brings Kravitz sharply into the present like the snap of a rubber band on his wrist. “Common misconception,” he replies.

Too often, he knows, he moves with the people around him into moments of emotion that he experiences through the story he’s already writing in his head—but now he finds himself looking square into two brown eyes, lined with blue, and he feels the tense present of the moment between them pressing into him like fingernails on skin.

Then, Taako smiles, with a new warmth. “Look at that. My dude _is_ funny.”

Kravitz flushes despite himself, and looks down at the table.

“So, what’s your favorite memory from filming?”

“Favorite memory? To be honest, I don’t have a lot of them. Young and dumb, you know how it is. Too many tequila shots, no sense of consequences.”

Kravitz is putting a mental pin in the detail, thinking it squares with the Taako people knew from TV, when he notices the uneasiness beneath his light tone. It’s subtle, but for the past hour, he has been paying very close attention to Taako.

“Yeah, I get it,” he replies, quickly.

“Really,” Taako says, his eyebrow raising, hesitation hidden as his voice dips deeper. “How ‘bout you tell me more about those wild nights, my dude.”

Kravitz stumbles a bit over his reply. “Nothing that wild.”

“That tracks. You strike me as the type who always had his head in a book,” Taako says, smiling. “That’s cute, too.”

As Kravitz blushes again for some reason, he realizes that this interview keeps straying into—just a conversation. It’s been an hour, and he has no idea what the hook here is for his piece. He glances down at the phone recording between them on the table, breaking their eye contact. Again, Taako seems to pick up the shift in his attention almost instantly, sensitive to the change in energy in a way that feels unnervingly intimate to Kravitz—and, he realizes, probably made him great on camera. He attempts one last time to return to the topic at hand.

“If you could go back in time, would you audition for _Bachelor in the Desert_?”

Taako doesn’t answer, for a while. He looks out the window, neon light from a nearby liquor store sign washing over his face, and Kravitz is convincing himself that he’s destroyed the rapport they built (rookie mistake, Krav, trust in an interview builds carefully as ceramics and is as easy to break) but he forces himself to just keep looking at him. Finally, Taako takes a deep breath. “Back then? Hell yeah. Young and dumb, remember? But now—no way, Taako’s good out here. Dying 11 times will have that effect on you.”

Kravitz laughs on instinct before he processes what Taako said, and then stops awkwardly. “Wait—could you repeat that?”

Taako doesn’t wait, his eyes steady on Kravitz’ now, like he’s just made up his mind to jump into deep water. “When you die 11 times, homie, it messes you up real good.”

There’s no humor in his voice, and his tone freezes a realization in Kravitz’ chest: Taako’s telling the truth, or he believes he’s telling the truth—either way, Kravitz has a story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first fic here, so any comments/feedback are appreciated! I’ve had these characters stuck in my head since the Balance arc ended, and I finally decided to write it out. I’m feeling a slow burn with banter and angst … hope you’re into it. I’ll try to update quickly, since I have this mostly written/planned out already. Character tags will be added as they are introduced, but rest assured—your favorites are probably going to show up soon, if they’re not here already ;)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (As a heads-up: this chapter includes some descriptions of anxiety.)

As he throws his suitcase onto the bed in his motel room, Kravitz’ phone glows with another text from his editor, Corva. “Sure it’s not a PR grab?”

“Why 11?” Kravitz answers, knowing how her editorial mind grabs at specifics.

“Hmm. Good point; you get half a week.”

Then: “Look, I spent my whole day pitching bankers who only read Ayn Rand to get enough funding so I don’t have to fire all our copyeditors. Don’t fuck me over on this.”

Then: “Also, always, stay safe.”

It’s past midnight; outside the window, a yellow safety light illuminates a few feet into the cracked asphalt of the empty motel parking lot, and the desert beyond reflects back a minimum of moonlight. Kravitz stares at the draft on his laptop, the neat spaces he left a week ago to fill in with quotes from Taako. While he’s thinking about how to salvage it, he pulls up a bootleg episode of the show.

5 years later, _Bachelor in the Desert_ is still terrible. “Is Magnus Burnsides strong enough for the ultimate challenge—finding love?” the narration begins, over a shot of Magnus riding a horse into the sunset. Quick cuts to each contestant blowing kisses, resplendent in neon formalwear. Without thinking, Kravitz pauses Taako and catches his wink perfectly, a bright blue eyelid resting neatly against his lower lashes as his hand spills a kiss outward. Next, Avi, the eventual winner: “here for the (craft) beer”. Finally, the title card: “Bachelor in the Desert: They’re thirsty … for love.” Kravitz knows they only shot here for some questionable tax breaks, and overcompensated by leaning hard into the cowboy angle; the kitsch made it a cult classic “lost season” of the now-veteran show. Recently, someone on a message board sleuthed out the fact that the star, the fan favorite contestant, and a crew member had all moved back here a couple years after filming wrapped, and it became a minor internet mystery—which is what brought Kravitz here, for an easy article.

What would it feel like to die 11 times? To come back alive the equal amount?

He’s half-watching someone ask Taako if he’s here for the right reasons when he feels his phone vibrate on his hip.

It’s from Taako: “still up?”

“Not for long.”

He sees the dots flash and disappear a few times. Then: “what a shame”, and a wink emoji. “how bout tomorrow”

Kravitz has no idea what he’s getting himself into. “Can I buy you breakfast?”

Taako sends a grin, a fried egg, and a sleeping face.

 

At least the diner Taako sends him to this morning has a name, although it’s an odd one: Merlegaritaville?

When he steps inside, it’s crowded enough that Kravitz hovers near the door until he sees Taako wave at him from a corner booth. Every ledge and windowsill is covered in plants that creep lushly over tables and booths with tropical density. Even though it’s winter, they bloom up against the windows, leaves glossy with the glow of good care. When he sits down across from Taako, their corner is surprisingly cozy, greenery muffling the sounds around them.

“What’s a Merlegarita?” Kravitz asks as he takes his coat off.

Taako smiles. “My dude, you don’t have enough party points to handle a Merlegarita.”

Taako’s mood is noticeably lighter, and he doesn’t mention their last conversation. Despite himself, Kravitz is swept up in small talk, and soon they’re two cups of coffee in and laughing about Merle—current owner of a faux-tropical diner, former TV production assistant, and third member of the transplanted _Bachelor in the Desert_ crew. Taako mentions him and Magnus constantly; Kravitz gets the sense that he spends most of his time with them, or alone.

“You have to admit, it’s a little odd that three people who worked on a popular TV show all moved to the same small town in the New Mexico desert afterwards,” Kravitz finally ventures.

“Such is the mystery of Taako.”

“Come on—you’ve got to give me more than that.”

“Fine. Merle was on his way back; his ex-wife and kids are here. He told Magnus and I he could hook us up with some work, and we both kind of drifted out here together after that. We were both—a little lost.”

“What kind of work do you do?”

“I freelance.” His smile suggests there’s more to the story. “Social media, mostly. Taako’s good at building a brand.”

Looking out at the empty street, Kravitz raises an eyebrow. “Is there a lot of image management work to be had here?”

Taako laughs. “Don’t insult my two-horse town.”

“Right, sorry. It’s just—that doesn’t seem like enough to occupy your days.”

He doesn’t want to push too hard, but how else can he get Taako to acknowledge last night: 11 deaths, his eyes blank in the neon light?

Taako shrugs. “What is enough, my dude?”

There’s another moment of silence between them, but it doesn’t feel antagonistic, just—a little bittersweet after their shared laughter. Kravitz decides to go for it.

“Taako, when you described yourself as ‘a little lost’ just now—what did you mean?”

Outside, the sun has shifted, casting shadows of the surrounding leaves across Taako’s face. Kravitz’ instinct is to fill the silence, but he forces himself to just sit there while they look at each other, each with a question the other doesn’t quite understand. It’s the longest Kravitz has looked at him uninterrupted, and he lingers for a moment on the curve of his cheek, the mess of his hair caught up quickly in an elastic he pulled off his wrist after the first cup of coffee. His eyes soften, and somehow, that’s the answer Taako needed.

“I know what you’re asking, my dude, and I’d prefer not to talk about it in public.”

“Right,” Kravitz says. “Sure. I’ve got a room in the motel near here where we can speak in private.”

“Tempted, but—“

Of course, Kravitz thinks, immediately embarrassed as Taako hesitates. Journalists don’t invite subjects back to their rooms. They barely know each other.

“Not that you don’t have a trustworthy face, Krav, but Taako feels more comfortable on his own turf when dealing with a handsome stranger. How ‘bout we go back to my place?”

 

They’re a few miles down a dirt access road when Taako turns the car towards the only building in sight; it’s a simple rectangle, low to the ground, and bright sun glints off the rippling corrugated steel sides. “Is that a shipping container house?” Kravitz turns to ask Taako, excitedly. “I’ve always wanted to build one of those!”

Inside, it’s comfortably messy, with no regard for the spare aesthetic of the construction. It’s clearly Taako’s space entirely, and he lives up to the edges of it, clothes thrown over chairs in the living room and empty mugs left on the kitchen windowsill. While they settle on a plush couch, Kravitz is still talking animatedly about the article he read in last month’s issue of _Dwell_ on the rise of pre-fab architecture when he realizes Taako isn’t saying anything—just nodding along, with an amused smile.

“Sorry I can’t nerd out with you on this one, Krav. Maggie built the place; I just live here.”

“Magnus … built you a _house_?”

_We both kind of drifted out here together_ , his mind interrupts, as if running back tape.

“Yeah, no big. That’s, like, his thing.”

Kravitz picks up a book from the nearby side table, turning it over in his hands but not really registering the title. “Are you two—“

“We’re just friends, Kravitz. Though your curiosity feels a little more than journalistic.”

Suddenly, Taako moves close (close enough that Kravitz can smell his skin and the faint floral notes of his perfume, and something unexpectedly strong catches in his stomach) and touches his hand. All Kravitz can do is stare—until Taako quickly breaks their gaze, dragging his fingers towards the book Kravitz is holding.

“Need that, handsome, or I can’t start dinner,” he says, and walks away into the kitchen.

 

After collecting himself, Kravitz follows, stepping off the bright rug onto bare concrete floor. Taako has pulled produce haphazardly out the fridge onto the kitchen island, and he starts dicing carrots and tossing them into a bowl. While he’s distracted, Kravitz breathes in deeply and takes the chance to return to the conversation they came here to have.

“Taako, I’d like to talk about what you said last night.”

“How I’ve died a bunch?” Taako replies, tossing a piece of carrot in his mouth.

“Well—yeah. I’m not saying I don’t believe you, but it’s a bold claim.”

Taako’s eyes darken as he crunches down on the carrot.

“Right, you need receipts; journalistic integrity and all that.”

He bends down and tugs open a drawer, working a folder out from underneath the stack of cookbooks inside and dropping it on the counter in front of Kravitz. It’s filled with what look like copies of medical records. As he shuffles through them, the forms all say the same thing: cardiac arrest, revived, attending physician Barry B. They’re on some kind of official letterhead, but they were copied quickly, crookedly. What looks like a logo dips partially in view in the top right corner of a few, but it’s grainy: a circle? With some other circles in it? Kravitz can’t quite bring it into focus. He spreads the papers silently across the counter, arranging them by date. The most recent is closest to him; it was only two weeks ago. Seeing the stuttering graphs of Taako’s heart laid out together like this, Kravitz feels a little sick. He notices that each time, it’s taking longer and longer to bring him back.

“Taako—“

Some distant part of himself registers a confirmation that his instincts were right—there’s some kind of story here—but mostly he just feels worried.

“I’m ok, my dude. I’m right here, walking and talking, aren’t I?”

“What is this? Is someone doing this to you?”

Taako sighs. “Not exactly. But I can’t tell you everything yet.”

“Ok. So whatever this is, it’s secret, and it’s still going on. I have to ask—why tell me?”

Taako leaves his prep work and steps around the island now, hopping up on it in front of Kravitz and kicking his feet in the air for a minute before answering.

“You’re right—I signed up for it. I’m ok with it, mostly. The pay’s great, the snacks are good, and I get to goof off with my best friends. But,” he pauses. “It feels like it’s getting more dangerous, and if something happens—I just … didn’t want to be forgotten.”

He’s looking down now, his hands gripping the edge of the counter.

“You’re not easy to forget, Taako,” Kravitz says quietly, and without thinking, he steps closer and brushes a loose curl behind his ear, fingers lingering for a second in the heat of his hair close to his skin before tracing his knuckles down his neck so lightly that he shivers.

“I’ll help however I can, if you want me to. I guess I’m just wondering—why did you tell _me_?”

“When you spend a lot of time communing with life and death, my dude, you learn to follow your instincts.” Kravitz doesn’t exactly know what he means, but he waits for more. “From the first time I saw you, I felt like there was—this part of me telling me to trust you.”

Finally, he looks up, and Kravitz feels it again—the combined intensity of their focus sticking him magnetically to the present. He takes another step forward, and he’s between Taako’s legs now, their faces inches apart. He’s waiting—for permission, for a decision—when Taako leans forward, pulling him in by his belt loops and brushing his lips against Kravitz’. He hovers there, and Kravitz can feel the heat of their breath and the slight slick of Taako’s lip balm, and he presses in to meet him. The kiss starts slow, but then Taako moves his tongue deeper, Kravitz bites softly at his bottom lip, and Taako moans in a way that curls Kravitz’ stomach with hunger for him, turned on as he discovers what Taako likes and they share it between them. He pushes his hands up over the elastic waist of Taako’s leggings and under his t-shirt, up the heat and wiry muscle of Taako’s back—and as he reaches his shoulderblades, he arcs his fingertips and brushes his nails gently back down. Taako moans and curls his back, clenching his legs around Kravitz’ hips to bring him closer. They’re kissing desperately now, and Kravitz senses a cliff edge coming in his desire—weightless on the other side, he would do anything Taako wants—and his cheeks are hot as he pulls away. They both catch their breath; Taako’s hands are on his hips, still tangled in the shirt edges he’s pulled from Kravitz’ pants.

“Fuck,” Taako says.

“Yeah,” Kravitz responds, and they both laugh shakily.

“Do you want to keep going?” Taako asks, and Kravitz appreciates the check-in.

“I want—“ He stops, and his silence clearly gives Taako some ideas. “But we shouldn’t. I mean, technically. I'm on on the job here. I’m sorry—“ and as he realizes that he just had possibly his best kiss ever with a man his company flew him out a day ago to get to know, he groans and presses his palms against his eyes.

“No apologies, Krav,” Taako says. “How about we finish this pasta, sit down at the table, and have a business dinner. Promise it’ll be _so_ professional you can submit it to your editor for reimbursement—as long as you kick the cash back to me, of course.”

So they sit down to eat, and they talk—about Taako’s favorite recipes, the kinds of things Kravitz writes when it’s just for himself, how it’s hard to meet people when your town is too small or too big. When they’re done, it’s late, the roads are “mad dangerous after dark” according to Taako, and Kravitz accepts his offer to stay for the night on his couch. He pulls a plush spare blanket over himself, watching Taako head into his own room, and falls asleep in minutes.

 

Later that night, Taako, Magnus, and Merle are deep underground in a room with no exit. Taako calls light from his hands, and the blue reflects off veins of raw diamond crossing the stone around them. Something is on the other side of those walls, a presence he feels like a migraine—something massive and insistent, that won’t stop until it ends them. It knocks against the walls close by, a low boom that Taako knows is an exploratory touch at half-strength. They’re the strangers here, not it, and it has the leisure of sniffing them out. They’re at a dead end and Taako knows it, his back pressed up against the stone, condensation soaking through his shirt and all he can do is wait to be consumed and begin again.

He opens his eyes to the same darkness, shirt wet against his skin, and a hand on him which he flails off. He knows what comes next but he always goes down fighting. He’s screaming, he realizes, and the other figure in the room is making sound too—reassurances that trip over each other.

“Taako! It’s me! It’s ok, you’re here, you’re ok.” He stills, and his eyes focus enough in the faint moonlight to realizes he’s in his own bed, and Kravitz is sitting on the mattress, wide-eyed and extending a hand towards him. “Hey, you’re ok. You were dreaming. I’m here, Taako.”

With a shaky exhale, he nods.

“Sorry. That happens sometimes.” And he tries, but he doesn’t have it in him to follow up with a joke. He just looks down at the mess of sheets, wondering how he can give Kravitz the excuse to leave that he’ll obviously want. This is a bit much for a first—date?—even he can admit that. “When I’m alone, it’s not—uh, not as big of a deal.” Kravitz shifts closer to him, hesitating and then settling his fingertips above Taako’s collarbone, tracing lightly towards his shoulder, slicking them with his sweat and Taako shivers, feeling a tug in his stomach. Kravitz’ fingers find the collar of his shirt where it’s fallen off his shoulder, and he gently pulls it back up, putting it straight.

“You shouldn’t have to be alone,” he says softly, and lies back in the bed. After a minute, Taako joins him, and after another minute, he moves himself against the curve of Kravitz’ chest.

When Taako finally settles against him, his breathing slowing, all Kravitz can think about are those graphs of his heartbeat, the terrifying evenness of the line until it’s shocked back into rhythm—how each one gets longer, until it seems like the flatness will extend without end, like the horizon over open ocean. He stares up at the ceiling, and from time to time, the headlight of a passing car scrapes a bar of light across it. It seems to mark its own sort of time, one which extends down into the depth of the night between the passing seconds marked by Taako’s heartbeat. Kravitz drifts there, unstuck from the passing hours, as he keeps watch.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter leans more into the mature rating eventually, but it should be clear what scene to skip if you'd prefer. Just a friendly heads-up.

Kravitz must have fallen asleep, eventually, because he wakes up to sun in his face and a note on the bedside table: “Got called in. You should go see Magnus and do your journalist thing.” There’s an address, a rural route he can only hope his GPS will recognize. “Call me later if you want.”

 

As soon as Kravitz parks his car and opens the metal gate, he’s overwhelmed by what he can only describe as a pack of dogs. Under other circumstances, he might be intimidated, but as they press up against him all at once in a mess, nudging and licking his legs, he starts to smile at the obvious enthusiasm. When he looks up, he sees a man who must be Magnus running towards them. He’s wearing a flannel shirt with the top buttons undone, and his hair is messy but well-cared for in a way Kravitz suspects must be Taako’s influence. “I’m sorry. They love new people,” he says, laughing. “I’m Magnus. I hope you’re ok with dogs?”

“Kravitz.” He can’t help but return the warmth in Magnus’ smile. “Dogs are ok.”

“Taako said you’re doing some article about the show? Before you put in that I’m an animal hoarder now, most of them are fosters.”

“Noted,” Kravitz says, and leans down to pat the black lab who’s sniffing his sleeve.

 

Unlike Taako’s place, Magnus’ house seems put together in anticipation of others, a chair in every corner and every chair piled with thick blankets. He gives Kravitz an aimless tour, gesturing around at a few of his favorite projects and offering him tea before walking out back and pointing proudly at a converted garage with the door rolled up. “This is where I usually hang out—the woodshop.”

Inside, Kravitz settles against the scuffed work table in the center of the room, leaning on his elbows and holding his cup of tea close. Large windows behind him let in sunlight that feels good in the cold room.

After a moment, he starts where he guesses Magnus expects him to start: “So … you and Taako met on set?”

“Yeah, we started hanging out a lot when we weren’t shooting.”

“It must have been nice to have someone to talk to. Besides the producers, I mean.”

“Yeah, you can say that again. Filming was tough—I mean, it’s not going into battle or anything, but spending 18-hour days on set gets to you after a while. You start forgetting what’s real and what’s for TV—especially if you’re surrounded by 24 gorgeous people telling you how into you they are all the time. When Taako and I were both off camera, we’d start talking about stuff to kind of keep ourselves grounded—real stuff.”

“Like what?”

Magnus is staring down at a small block of wood in his hands that he’s idly begun to carve it into a shape Kravitz can’t identify.

“I mean—I told him about that guy I was kind of seeing back home, how I didn’t know if I should break it off. He told me about growing up. He had a pretty rough childhood.” Kravitz remembers their conversation over dinner last night: his aunt was a great chef, _when she had the energy. The last thing she taught me were macaroons, but I was like 10, so I fucked that right up._

“Ugh. I guess that’s kind of a scoop—that he knew about my ex,” Magnus says, grimacing. “If people still care about that. But hey—the thing about Taako as a kid—don’t print that, ok?”

Kravitz nods. “I’m not really here to dig up dirt.”

Magnus’ shoulders relax a bit. Kravitz breathes in, smelling the cut wood surrounding them—scents he guiltily realizes he can only identify as ingredients in cologne: cedar, pine.

Taako must feel safe here.

“And then you guys moved back here together?”

“Yeah—there was a job, and we were told we’d be perfect for it.” He laughs darkly, and pieces snap together in Kravitz’ mind. He takes another deep breath, and decides to go for it.

“The first time I met Taako, he told me he had died. More than once. And then he showed me proof.”

Magnus drops his carving, and his eyes go wide. “He _told_ you?”

“He didn’t tell me how, or why. But this ‘job’ you both keep mentioning—is it connected to that?”

Magnus is still staring at him—so Kravitz asks again, his voice gentler this time.

“Magnus, have you died too?”

Magnus sinks his head into his hands. “I can’t believe he told you. We’ve never— Uh. Yeah—me too, the dying thing.” He walks around the table, puts his hands on Kravitz’ shoulders, and looks at him intently—and then wraps him in a tight hug. “He must really trust you.”

Kravitz is a bit taken aback, but he tries to return the hug, patting Magnus awkwardly on the shoulder. “Are you two in danger? Are you being made to do something against your will?”

Magnus pulls away, leaning back against the table beside Kravitz. “Umm. Hard to say on the first one, and no on the second one.”

“He hasn’t told me much of anything,” Kravitz says, curling his hands around the table edge in front of him and looking down at them. Then, more softly: “I don’t—I don’t really know what to do.”

“What exactly did he tell you?”

Kravitz repeats everything: the diner, the charts, Taako’s screams in the middle of the night. At that, Magnus winces. “I didn’t know he was taking it so hard.” He turns his head to give Kravitz a serious look. “If he told you, that means he wants your help. And he’s not good at asking for that.” Kravitz remembers this morning’s note: _Call me if you want to_ , and then he tells Magnus about that too _._

Magnus rocks forward decisively to his feet. “Nope. I'm not letting him pull that move. I got called in this morning, too—and if you’re cool with it, I think you should come with me.”

 

An hour later they’re deep into a part of the desert lunar in its emptiness when Kravitz suddenly notices a half-ring of concrete buildings rising into view, bleak and blending seamlessly into the weathered landscape. Magnus skids his truck to a stop in front to the central building, and as soon as Kravitz steps out of the car, white dust coats his shoes. Now that they’re closer, he can see that it’s less of a building with clear seams, and more a collection of stark planes that lean into each other to conceal rooms the way people turn their backs to hide a conversation.

The front is wrapped in a wide concrete patio, level with the desert floor and broken only by one sunken swimming pool—and in the middle of it is Taako, shirtless, resting his elbows on the concrete. He’s uncharacteristically still as he watches them come closer, water smooth as glass against his chest, reflecting the first hints of the sunset above. As they get closer, Kravitz realizes he’s staring at the drops of water on his shoulders that sparkle golden in the low light. Taako meets his eyes, lids lowered. “I thought I said to call?” he says, and Kravitz can’t quite read his expression. “I would have made myself decent first.”

At that moment, a woman walks out from one of the shadowed corridors. Her hair is cropped close and her long white robe is tailored exactly, just brushing the concrete as she walks towards them and extends a hand to Kravitz. “Welcome to Balance, a spiritual retreat. I’m Lucretia, your host.” Her tone isn’t particularly inviting, but it isn’t cold, either—just impenetrable, masking her thoughts like tinted glass. She glances between Magnus and Taako, seemingly trying to assign responsibility for this stranger. “Magnus, would you mind putting our guest’s things in Taako’s room?”

“Oh, uh—I’m not—I’m just here to—shadow Taako. I’m on assignment. I’m a journalist,” Kravitz corrects, clumsily.

“I see.” Lucretia’s expression hardens a bit, and she seems to look him over more closely. “We have a strict ban on electronics here, you understand, to promote the wellness of our guests. I’ll require your cell phone and your laptop, if you brought them. They’ll be perfectly safe in my office.”

The request puts Kravitz on edge, but he tries not to show it. “Unfortunately, I’m on deadline, and my editor doesn’t like it when I go off the grid.”

“I’m afraid this policy is non-negotiable,” Lucretia replies. “After all, our purpose here is to free you from the deadlines and worries of the material world.”

Kravitz glances back to Taako, who doesn’t seem concerned.

“Come on, Krav. You do know how to write with a pencil and paper, right? Kids these days.” He gestures teasingly with his hand, and a few drops of water fall from his fingers, quickly fading on the concrete still warm from the afternoon sun.

Kravitz smiles despite himself, and nods agreement to Lucretia. “Of course. I understand.”

Fortunately, the check seems to be on an honor system for now; he hands over his work phone and laptop from his bag, but keeps his personal phone hidden in his pocket. She seems satisfied, taking them carefully in her arms and turning towards the nearest corridor. “If you’ll follow me, I’ll show you to your room.”

 

Kravitz’ room is just as spare as the rest of the place, completely bare except for the necessary furniture, all in neutral tones of linen and light wood. The clear focal point is a floor-to-ceiling window that makes up the entire far wall, framing the landscape outside. The way the walls converge without distraction towards it gives Kravitz the feeling that he’s being pulled outward into the desert horizon. Normally he would appreciate the aesthetic—a minimalism that alienates some, but usually relaxes him—but there’s something unsettling about how calmly the room overpowers him.

Kravitz has just finished unpacking when Taako slides through the doorway, leaning up against the wall next to it.

“Sorry, Magnus should have told you about the no electronics thing.”

Kravitz points up and circles his finger questioningly, and somehow Taako gets what he means. “The place isn’t bugged, my dude. Lucretia is a lot of things but she’s not a perv.”

His eyes travel to the open closet door, where Kravitz’ clothes are now hung evenly spaced.

“Really making the place your own, huh?”

“I like to keep things neat,” he says, turning to close his suitcase.

“Then you’re in the wrong place, handsome,” Taako says, with none of the flirtation he usually puts behind the word.

When Kravitz turns back around, Taako is gone. “Dinner’s this way,” he hears him yell down the hallway. Kravitz runs to catch up with him, but he doesn’t turn around.

 

The dining room is mostly empty, dimly lit by another massive window that filters the last of the sunset across the concrete floor. Lucretia is huddled at a corner table, going over a stack of papers with a man in light-wash, bootcut jeans, who keeps glancing nervously at Taako. Taako steers Kravitz towards a table on the other side of the room, flanked by two low benches; Magnus is already waiting there, and Kravitz sits down across from him. Taako slides in next to Magnus, who shoots him a curious look which Taako ignores. Soon after, another man shuffles over, wearing a tropical print shirt untucked over cargo shorts and fraying Teva’s. His long white hair is pulled back in a ponytail, and he’s pushing a cart stacked with plates of food with one hand.

“Merle. Of Merlegaritaville,” Taako says. “He’s what passes for a cook here.”

“Stuff it, Taako,” Merle says, and sits down next to Kravitz after passing out the plates, keeping one arm still in his pocket.

“By the way, Merle, I have some thoughts on the new menu at your place,” Taako says, turning to him, but he just waves it away with a chuckle.

“You know I don’t mess with that.”

“That’s the problem. If you spent _half_ the time on the menu that you do perfecting your margarita recipe and watering your plants, the place would have a Michelin star.”

The three of them continue like this for a while, catching up by one-upping each other, and Kravitz sits back and listens. It’s clear how close they are, not just from what they say in shorthand but from how they all know what not to say to each other—what words cast a shadow on the conversation, and how exactly to outrun it. After a while, Magnus makes an effort to bring him in, which he appreciates.

“Hey, Kravitz met the pack today. They're good dogs, right, Kravitz?”

“Yeah, they're good dogs. They're a _lot_ of dogs.”

Taako laughs loudly, still not looking at Kravitz. “Told you! At least you’ve got Ben now, right?”

Merle leans in to explain. “Magnus scored a college intern to help out when he’ll be—gone.” And there is a shadow; the three of them trade looks, and Taako effortlessly steers the conversation away. “The poor teen is in love with him.”

Magnus shakes his head vigorously. “He’s not in love with me. He needed a summer job!”

“It's winter now, Mags. And you overpay him—he'd do it for free.”

“What's the point of a crush if you can't get free stuff out of it?” Merle says, winking at Kravitz. “Although I’m sure Taako would make an exception for a penniless writer. Or maybe you’ve got something else to give.”

Kravitz’ eyes go wide, and Magnus leans across the table to punch Merle in the arm.

“Don't scandalize the stranger, Merle. That's my job,” Taako says evenly.

 

Taako doesn’t warm up to Kravitz any more over dinner, and as they linger over empty plates the conversation becomes ever more insular, circling around dense silences that make it clear they can’t speak freely around him. After a few minutes, he stands up and excuses himself. Taako makes no move to follow him, and when he turns around in the doorway, he’s huddled in intense conversation with Magnus.

As he walks down the empty hallway and closes the door to his room behind him, Kravitz becomes increasingly sure he’s made a mistake. It’s clear that the three of them are the only ones standing between each other and something dark—Kravitz is just intruding. 

Without his laptop, he can’t take apart a draft or read an article or anything else he’d usually do to distract himself; he just lies there, looking out at the window at the desert until he falls asleep, earlier than usual.

 

The next morning, Kravitz wakes up at dawn. It’s odd how sensitive he’s becoming to his surroundings here already, his internal clock reset to the sun. He grabs coffee from a carafe in the empty dining room and heads out to the patio, huddles on a wide chaise lounge with his knees to his chest, and pulls a blanket over himself against the chill. He brought a magazine with him from his suitcase, but he can’t focus to read it. Lucretia was right; this place seems specifically designed to free the mind from the material world, nothing in the featureless concrete or unending desert to tether his attention. The only ways to mark time are sun, weather, and his own continuing breath. He takes a sip of coffee, the bright sting on his tongue bringing him back to himself. Suddenly, he hears footsteps approaching, and when he turns around he sees Taako, who gives him a small smile and then sits on the edge of his chair.

“Morning.”

“Morning,” Kravitz replies, looking at him uncertainly over the blanket pulled up to his chin. Taako takes a deep breath.

“I’m, uh—I’m glad you’re here. I should’ve said that last night.”

“You don’t have to. I should have talked to you before just showing up.”

“No, you did the right thing, my dude. I’m just—not used to that.”

Kravitz reaches out from under the blanket to touch Taako’s hand, and he yelps at the contact.

“Fuck, you’re an icicle!”

Kravitz pulls away, mumbling an apology. But then Taako smiles, tilting his head. “You’re too hot to be that cold, my man.”

Kravitz groans at the terrible line, and there it is—the spark in Taako’s eye that Kravitz realizes he had missed an unreasonable amount. “Could use somebody to warm me up,” he says, lifting up the edge of the blanket.

Taako crawls in, tangling their legs and curling up against his side. He settles with his head against Kravitz’ shoulder, and then looks up to give Kravitz an easy smile.

Kravitz tilts his head down to kiss him. Taako leans in to meet him, and it’s slow, their lips warming steadily. Taako wanders a hand up behind the crook of his neck and lets out a quiet hum. Neither of them spark the urgency of that first time at Taako’s place, but somehow it feels just as charged, the gentleness admitting a care that neither of them have words for yet.

Once they pull away, Taako burrows his head into Kravitz’ shoulder. Kravitz can feel his breath through his t-shirt, and he focuses on the rhythm for a while, staring out at the desert and tracing small circles against Taako’s arm with his thumb. They’re quiet for long enough that he thought Taako had fallen asleep when he starts to speak—so softly that Kravitz can’t understand him at first, the words catching in his shirt.

It takes Taako a few tries, but he finally gets it all out. He, Merle, and Magnus go on missions for Lucretia. Under her watch, they project their souls loose from their bodies, and they end up in these _worlds_ , somehow: mangled metal cars hurtling towards a cliff, a laboratory overgrown with crystal that took all the feeling from Merle’s arm. In each place, there’s a thing she wants them to retrieve. The last world was a town that kept exploding and remaking itself, taking them along with it before they could find what they came for. He felt like he might die a lot, before—in that town, he finally did. But she kept sending them back, and so he did again, ten more times, until they got what she needed. Still, months later, he can’t fall asleep without feeling like it’s happening again.

Kravitz holds him closer as he begins tripping over his words, trying to explain how it felt like he was a lightbulb screwed out of a socket, or something, coming immediately and completely out of his own body, how the worst part was when he woke up in a world that looked the same, but he knew this new self had been ripped off of who he was before and dressed in the same clothes, a horrible void in between who he was and who he is. He wasn’t sure he even counted as the same person anymore, really—call this model the Taako 12—and then Kravitz feels a small damp patch spreading on his shirt. Taako is crying, and trying unsuccessfully to hide it.

“I’m so sorry, Taako,” he repeats for a while, stroking his hair, until Taako finally takes a shuddering breath and looks up at him.

“Pretty fucked up, right? You see why ‘cha boy doesn’t lead with that right out the gate?”

“It’s a lot,” Kravitz agrees.

Taako shakes his head. “I don’t know why you don’t just think I’m crazy. I would.”

Kravitz doesn’t have an answer right away for that. Something to do with how large he’s always sensed the world to be, with more than enough room for finite rules to end and for endless laws to twist over themselves, kinking to create exceptions that once in a lifetime, maybe, he might pass through. The same reason that as a child, he believed his mother when she said their house was haunted, and set out a glass of water for the ghost.

“I guess—I trust you, Taako.”

Taako presses closer into his shoulder.

“Why don’t you walk away? Why risk any more?”

Taako tries to tell him about a town leveled to black glass, women in love who became a cherry tree—how for years now he had stepped into worlds where no-one was real but the three of them, and watched everyone around them suffer in fantastic color. He tries to explain the feeling of cherry blossoms tangling in his hair as Magnus and Merle stood beside him, the only other people who had witnessed this thing no-one else would believe.

What comes out is: “I can’t let those two dinguses do this without me. And if I did, I’m not sure anyone else would have me.”

Kravitz winces. “I promise I don’t usually say something like this after one weekend, but if you want to walk away, I’ll go with you. And if you want to stay, I’ll be here.”

“You’ve got a real sappy streak, Krav,” Taako chuckles. “I kinda like it.”

The sun is higher now, starting to warm their faces, but they stay wrapped in the blanket for a while. They’re both lost in their own thoughts, but it feels good to have each other there when they return.

 

Taako’s gone for the rest of the day, working. Kravitz tries to write in a notebook Lucretia left in his room, gives up, and then wanders for a while, eventually making his way back outside a little after dark. When he steps onto the patio, he sees Magnus, leaning back in one of the lounge chairs with his arms behind his head; he’s sweating, stripped down to an undershirt in the cool air, as if he’s been training hard.

“Kravitz, buddy. Hey!” Magnus waves him over, brightening. “Taako’s still down with Lucretia. Hang out for a sec?” Kravitz walks to the next chair over and lies back, too; the sky above them is clearer than he’s ever seen it, crowded with stars he doesn’t recognize.

“These first nights here, it always feels like shore leave or something,” Magnus says. “Drink your last beer, say what you need to, that kind of thing.”

Kravitz tries to come up with anything comforting to say, and falls short.

“Taako—told me about Refuge. I’m sorry. I can’t even guess what that’s like.”

“Thanks.” Then, “That’s good. I’m glad you guys talked.”

They sit together in silence for a moment; Magnus’s breathing is slowing, and he reaches for his discarded flannel shirt and pushes his arms through the sleeves.

“Kravitz, when we first met, there’s one question you didn’t ask me that I thought you would—did me and Taako date?”

Kravitz nods, watching the moon rise over the distant cliffs. “It doesn’t really seem like my business.” He pauses. “He told me you’re friends.”

“We are. Definitely.” Magnus runs a hand through his hair. “We got pretty close on the show, and after—it was kind of a weird time. We talked about it, but it never clicked. He needed a friend more than a relationship. We both did.”

“And now?”

“Yeah, I guess it never really stopped being a weird time,” Magnus chuckles, then sighs. “But the more we hung out, it seemed like we were meant to be friends, and that was it. And once we realized that, it got easier for us to trust each other. So when we started going through all this—it made us closer. Which is always weird at first for anyone we date.”

“Oh, I don’t know if we’re—I mean—“

Magnus grins. “Come on. He won’t stop talking you up to me. If I have to hear about how you’re hot AND funny AND smart one more time…”

“I don’t—uh. That’s nice of him.”

Magnus is laughing now. “Oh, you’re so his type.”

Kravitz buries his face in his hands. “Thanks, Magnus.”

Magnus reaches over and squeezes his shoulder. “Seriously—I’ve seen Taako keep things casual. You, here, is definitely not casual.”

 

Kravitz is changing into a freshly ironed shirt an hour later, about to try to find Magnus again and get some dinner, when Taako finally walks into his room. His cheeks are flushed from training, but he’s freshly changed into a thin sweater tucked into a leather miniskirt. Taako eyes Kravitz, lingering on his chest under his half-open shirt, and though he probably should finish buttoning it, Kravitz moves to fasten his cuffs instead.

“How was your day, honey?” Taako says with a smirk. “I like seeing you all dressed up when I come home.”

“Well, I didn’t have much to do other than think about how to impress you,” Kravitz answers playfully. “Seriously, there isn’t even a real library in this place. The only book I could find was called _How to Transcend in 7 Days_ , and it took an hour to read the whole thing.”

“Well, I’m glad to see it didn’t work. Kind of like you here in the physical plane.”

Kravitz smiles, but given where they are and what he knows now, the joke lands oddly. Taako feels it too. They’re silent for a moment, and Taako lingers, leaning back against the wall. “Lovely to catch up, but is there anything else you wanted?” Kravitz finally asks.

“Besides your mouth on me?” Taako fires back, in the tone he always uses to fluster Kravitz.

This time, Kravitz waits a beat, and looks him steadily in the eye. “Really?”

Taako’s smirk fades into a small smile. “I mean—hell yeah.”

Kravitz walks slowly to him, grabs his hips, and presses him into the wall, stopping his lips a few inches from Taako’s to feel the breath against his mouth as Taako whispers, “If you want to. I just finished up with Lucretia, and I have to report for our next mission in 20 minutes. I just—wanted to see you first.”

Kravitz nods, slowly drawing a finger up to hook it under the high waist of Taako’s skirt, pulling him closer for a kiss that he hopes can drown out some of the fear he sees in his eyes. Taako shivers at the cool touch on his training-warmed skin, the tug of leather digging into his back.

Just as he moves to deepen the kiss and wrap his arms around Kravitz’ waist, Kravitz sinks to his knees on the floor and runs his hands up Taako’s thighs to push up his skirt. He squeezes the thick fabric tightly in his hands, kissing Taako’s thigh, the ticklish joint of his hip, and finally the edge of his thong, slipping his tongue teasingly underneath the edge of the fabric and tracing a line up Taako that coaxes a wrecked sigh out of him. When he finally takes him into his mouth, Taako groans and closes his eyes, and it’s not long before he starts to feel a familiar sense of drifting out of himself. Instinctively he snaps his eyes open to bring himself back, before he looks down and relaxes at the sight of Kravitz, the knowledge that he’s _here_ —they both are. Soon, he pushes a hand into Kravitz’s locs, moaning urgently, “Fuck, Fuck, Krav, I’m—“ Kravitz meets his eyes, and doesn’t pull away.

Kravitz would be happy to hold him for the time they have left and let his own urgency fade, but soon after he stands back up Taako spits into his palm and reaches into his pants. It’s a little rough, the need between them more important than technique, and it feels incredible. As Taako presses his mouth to his neck, chasing his wet lips with a graze of teeth, Kravitz comes undone. He’s repeating Taako’s name like nonsense into his shoulder, and Taako grabs his chin and turns him in for a slow kiss.

When Kravitz walks into the bathroom to get a washcloth, he looks at himself in the mirror, and he can just barely make out the mark Taako left on his neck against his dark skin. Taako comes up behind him, kisses the mark again, and meets Kravitz’ eyes in the mirror.

“I have to go.”

Once they’re dressed and headed for the door, Kravitz impulsively grabs Taako’s hand and pulls him back for one last kiss. Then, hand in hand, they walk outside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to Balance, everyone! Hope you enjoy your stay. For reference, I imagine it looks like the Amangiri resort in Utah (worth a quick search for the pictures), which seems to be a very lovely and very non-suspicious place in real life.
> 
> If you have any guesses about how many dogs, exactly, Magnus has, or how many pairs of "work jeans" Barry has, feel free to leave them in the comments. I'm undecided on both.


	4. Chapter 4

As soon they step outside onto the patio, the man Kravitz saw talking to Lucretia his first night here runs up and pulls Taako into a hug, patting him on the back and pulling away to look him over. His forehead is marked with lines too deep for how young he looks, and he nervously pushes his thick glasses up the bridge of his nose. “How are you? Last time was—“ he stops, glancing at Kravitz and noticing his and Taako’s hands intertwined. “Rough.”

“No shit, Barry,” Taako says.

Barry? From Taako’s charts? Kravitz doesn’t know what he expected, but certainly someone more sinister than a man in denim who hugs before speaking. His surprise must show on his face, because Taako gestures lazily between them. “Right. Kravitz, Doctor Barry. Barry, Kravitz. Kravitz is—my hot friend, and Barry is the nerd who keeps saving my life.” Barry laughs nervously, clearly uncertain how much Taako has told Kravitz.

“Where’s Merle?”

“His arm’s getting worse. We can’t risk it.”

Lucretia walks over and breaks up their conversation, linking her arm in Taako’s to lead him away. They huddle intently for a few moments, Lucretia outlining something that sounds like a plan; Kravitz catches a few snippets, but they make no sense. Something about a—bell? Taako nods, though, and walks over to sit down beside Magnus, who obviously noticed them come in together and gives Kravitz a wink. Lucretia clips monitors on the tips of their right index fingers. Barry’s already gone, and when Kravitz looks over at him, his stomach drops—Barry is standing near what looks like a heart monitor, with a defibrillator kit already open on the ground.

Lucretia walks a deliberate semi-circle behind them, switching on giant floodlights that block out all the stars above and make Kravitz’ eyes sting. Taako stretches his hands, smiling at Kravitz with a raised brow, and then he and Magnus settle into practiced meditation poses and close their eyes. It’s peaceful, at first, their faces glowing in the artificial light as the small sounds of the desert night surround them. As soon as Taako can’t see him, Kravitz begins to bite his thumbnail.

 

When Taako opens his eyes, he and Magnus are walking through what looks like a TV shoot wrapping up for the day. Thick audio cables coil across the grass beneath them, and off to the side is a folding table holding a tray of half-empty champagne glasses, one with a trace of lipstick on the rim. Magnus and Taako look at each other, full of dread.

Suddenly, a figure slinks out of the fog, long blonde braid lacquered with hairspray and the sequined hem of her dress catching on the grass underfoot.

“Wish there was a spell to make wearing stilettos on turf easier, am I right, Taako?” she says, extending a manicured hand. “Lydia. I’m here to win this whole thing.”

Another form comes into view, this time in a shiny tuxedo. “Edward. And you better not break my sister’s heart.” Together, they burst out laughing.

“Just kidding. Follow me, boys,” Lydia says, and Taako and Magnus look nervously at each other. They’re used to facing spirits this far out, unstuck energy assuming body-like forms for games, but these two are wound around more energy than they’ve ever seen. 

“We know what you’re here for, and if you want to earn it, we’re going to play a little game we call Heart Attack.”

Lydia and Edward lead them towards what looks like like a temporary production tent, and Edward pulls open the thick white front flap, waving grandly inside. “Welcome to Wonderland. After you.”

Inside, it’s dark beyond the hot glare of stage lights, all focused on two podiums placed in front of a full bay of monitors and two director’s chairs, which Lydia and Edward promptly slouch into, gesturing at the podiums. “Places, please.”

As their eyes adjust, Taako and Magnus see nameplates in a familiar cursive script—if he didn’t know better, Taako would think they’d scavenged old props from their season. Grimly, they take their places.

“We've watched your season, and we don't think Taako got a fair shake,” Lydia continues. “Avi was a snooze; the real star power is obviously right here.”

“Thanks, but Taako's good,” he says, carefully hiding the slight quiver in his voice. 

“Mm-mm,” Edward frowns, and leans down to sit something on the grass between them—a small, golden bell. “You’ll play our game. Both of you.” He has their attention now, and he grins. “Magnus, describe your perfect first date with Taako.”

“I mean, we hung out all the time. So—sit in a trailer and goof off, I guess.” 

“Yes, Magnus, you ‘hung out’, but you never picked Taako for a real, on-screen date. I want to know how you’d make him feel special.”

Magnus rolls his eyes at Edward. “Catch fireflies. Whatever. Sure, I guess take ourselves off mic and grab a blanket, steal the good stuff from craft service and sneak far out enough out in the yard that they couldn’t find us.”

This far out, Taako is more open to the energy around him, in the same way that low oxygen at physical heights makes him lightheaded. He looks down at his podium, scratches a fingernail hard into it to try and center himself, and sees unbroken laminate. It’s true—they hung out all the time, nicknaming PA’s they hated and sharing blankets against the desert cold, and sure, there were a few times where Taako had let himself think that this—whatever they were doing—had to be more real than the cheesy dates production set up for Magnus. Like the morning Magnus had come straight from a reshoot of a dawn helicopter tour, hair still tangled from the wind, and fallen asleep in Taako’s cot halfway through telling him about it—

“Hmm. I would have imagined something with more panache, but I guess he's into it.” 

Magnus looks over, trying to hide his concern as Lydia takes over. Taako usually doesn’t take damage this easily. 

“Taako. Tell me about the first time you kiss him.”

“Easy—I wouldn’t,” he says, pushing down a memory before they can use it as ammunition: Magnus resting his head on his shoulder as he explained that they guy back home was great, but no matter who he dated, it felt like something was missing.  ( _Lips on his thigh, If you want to walk away I’ll go with you—Kravitz_ , he thinks, but energy fights him and remembering feels like struggling to breathe.)

Edward’s face blanks to a void, and the bell in the grass sputters transparent. “I’m warning you, if you don't play, we'll destroy what you came for.”

Taako hears the threat in the voice of the producer who sat him down in front of an hour of B-roll to try and force him to confess feelings. _You know how we’ll cut it; you might as well get your side of the story out there, too._ It didn’t work then, and it wasn’t going to work now. Taako’s face is hot—he’s so over this he’s imagining flame consuming the entire tent they stand in—but Magnus mouths _play_.

“Fine. Nothing complicated. We're walking, we're talking, he says something dumb and earnest, I lean over and kiss him.”

Lydia and Edward lean back in their chairs as his words hang in the air, as if they’re watching another version of their lives. And then they are, sort of: the bank of monitors behind Lydia comes to life, and it's playing footage of Taako's last rose ceremony. Magnus doesn’t catch it at first, but after a few cycles he notices that what he thought was Taako batting his eyelashes was actually him blinking away small tears.

“But that was just for TV. You were fine with it, right?”

“I mean—it didn’t feel great, my dude.”

The footage loops, Magnus’ words echoing between them: “This has been fun, but I don’t think you’re ready for something serious, Taako.”They’re both frozen there watching it, Taako’s eyes blown up as big as one of Magnus’ palms.

“You could have been soulmates,” Lydia taunts, breathing an exaggerated sigh at the screen.

 

Kravitz, watching intently, notices Taako’s breath start to slow past relaxation into stillness, his body slumping forward slightly and his hands falling loose from their neat hold in his lap. As each breath spaces out further, his face drains of color, and then his lips are blue and the monitor in front of Barry lets out a loud alarm—and Barry switches it off, watching him flatline. Kravitz starts to lunge forward, but Barry is behind him at once, grabbing his upper arms firmly to hold him back.

“60 seconds, Kravitz, then we bring him back.”

Lucretia looks up from her computer, snapping: “Distracting Barry will be fatal for them. Calm down or leave.”

Kravitz stops struggling, but Barry can hear how ragged his breath is. Taako’s body falls from yoga-perfect posture into a mess on the ground, and Lucretia barely catches his head before it hits the concrete.

“I know how fucking terrifying this looks,” Barry whispers, before moving back to the monitors.

 

Suddenly, Magnus reaches out. They can’t turn to face each other, now, energy hot and rigid against their faces, and his fingers knock clumsily against Taako’s palm until Taako clutches at the contact and weaves their fingers together. They both sense something terrible on the way, energy curling the air around them like a coming thunderstorm.

“Taako, you deserve more than this,” Magnus says fiercely, gesturing around them at the fake set and flickering footage with his free hand.

And then the energy comes unstuck from the figures in front of them and descends with unfathomable damage, all the stage lights around them collapsing and shattering in a blinding pulse. In the brief second after their hold breaks, Taako manages to dive for and secure the bell in front of them, and somehow a powerful fire rips out of his other hand towards the lights falling on Magnus—but it's not enough.

As he’s blacking out Taako can see a rip open in his vision into pure darkness, and he watches as a light he knows is Magnus is shuffled through it, the raw edges skimming over his body like a bedsheet as he disappears.

 

Taako wakes up on Balance concrete. His and Magnus’ bodies are lying side by side, their fingers barely touching. Magnus is pale, his lips dark blue. Taako curls into him, then over him, their foreheads touching, but there’s nothing anyone can do—and Taako stills, feeling Magnus’ heat fade against his hands, invisibly to the others who stand in a shocked semi-circle around them.

Eventually, Magnus’ chest is cold, and he feels Kravitz’ hand touch his shoulder hesitantly. Taako looks up, but his eyes are dull, focused somewhere in the distant mountain range on the horizon. His arms give out and he falls to the ground, curled up against Magnus.

A sudden harsh wind catches Lucretia’s robe, and for the first time Kravitz sees real emotion on her face as she stares at Magnus and Taako’s bodies on the ground. “Oh god, Taako, we couldn’t get him back—it was too much damage—I’m sorry—" and as she steps closer, Kravitz immediately steps forward, shielding them both. She stops awkwardly, and whatever she sees in Kravitz’ eyes at that moment, she acknowledges as a force more powerful than herself. She doesn’t come any closer; without a word, Kravitz kneels down, wraps his arms around Taako, and lifts him up. The sound he’s making is past crying; he’s just wailing, a sound so deep it catches in Kravitz’ bones as his head falls against his chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this one's intense. But Balance has ways of doing the impossible, and there's more to the story.


	5. Chapter 5

Taako sleeps for days, and as each new morning and night passes without waking him up, Kravitz narrows himself down in a panic to the simplest tasks: making sure the water glass on his bedside table is always full, brushing away the hair his restless sleep pushes over his eyes.

After four days, Taako rolls over and makes a confused sound, his eyes blinking open. “How are you feeling?” Kravitz asks quietly, sitting down nervously on the edge of the mattress and laying a hand on his arm. Taako reaches up and pulls his head down to his shoulder, avoiding his eyes. Kravitz kisses him gently, tasting the salt of his skin on his collarbone—and this close, Kravitz can feel instantly as Taako’s mood sours, the pulse in his neck beginning to thrum faster with nerves. Kravitz sits up, shifting back to the edge of the bed and dropping his head into his hands. “I’m sorry,” he says, voice catching. “I’m tired,” Taako says, his voice flat. “Of course. I’ll go,” Kravitz says.

 

At first, Taako dreams of Magnus under TV lights, in expensive suits. The damage he’s taken on collapses what could have been, what was, and what is—and he doesn’t know how to explain any of that to Kravitz, yet. So he kicks him out, and rolls over facedown into the pillow.

A little while later, Kravitz brings Merle by, and leaves them alone. Taako pretends to be asleep, but Merle waits, and when he finally gets an explanation halfway out—producer-monsters and a terrible game—Merle understands. After all, he had been there too, holding a boom mic while PA’s tried to convince Taako to sabotage Avi’s date, and Magnus to send flowers. Merle watched those claustrophobic weeks convince Taako and Magnus they were the only people each other could trust, and he warned them about tricks when he could. When Taako starts to hallucinate again out on the patio the next day—their life a season produced by Edward and Lydia, colors heightened and the concrete sprayed down to fake a rainstorm—Merle puts a hand on his and asks him to repeat what happened after the cameras.

The first time Magnus called after sending him home, Taako starts hesitantly, he was a little tipsy and coming home from a bad date. _“It was so boring, Taako, he talked about his accountant the whole time—“_

_“Did you try telling him to do you like a 1099?“_

(Merle snorts.) Magnus burst into the same loud laugh he remembered—and then, after it faded, _“Hey, this isn’t weird, is it?”_

_“Course not, my dude,”_ Taako lied.

_“Good. I just—missed talking to you. You give the best worst advice.”_

As they talked, passing traffic faded into the jangle of keys and rattling dishes as Magnus got home and made tea. It sounded so oddly domestic, so unlike the bursts of walkie-talkie static he was used to hearing behind their conversations. Listening, Taako realized he had no idea what Magnus’ kitchen looked like, or what kind of mug he would reach for.

What they had might have been more real than a cold dinner hovered over by a producer, sure, but it wasn’t real. This, though—dumb texts and bad advice—might be.

Magnus called him again after the first episode aired, his breath a little uneven. The A plot: Magnus falling for Avi while flirting with everyone. B plot: Avi getting jealous of how much time Magnus spent with Taako. C plot: Magnus obviously leading Taako on.  _“It wasn’t like that, was it? Like, I was there, but that—isn’t me. Is it?”_

_“No, it isn’t,”_ Taako said quietly. _“They use what they have to make you see what they want.”_ (Lydia flashes into his mind, grinning at the monitors, and he tightens his hand against Merle’s.) _“We are friends, though. That’s real. And gold is absolutely my color. I looked amazing in that dress.”_

It was easier, after that; they called each other in free moments on the way to work they hated or when they couldn’t sleep, they both took the weird job Merle emailed them about, and now of course Taako knows what his favorite mug is—it’s the tacky one Taako bought him that says “Best in Show”, always ready on the shelf near the microwave for the next time he needs it—and at that, Taako’s stomach drops and he leans into Merle, who wraps his good arm around him tightly.

Whenever the colors around him start to feel too saturated again, he repeats it all, and slowly his mind begins to settle.

 

While Taako sleeps, Kravitz distracts himself with small errands; this morning’s excuse is an empty pill bottle on Taako’s nightstand. When he knocks on the door of Barry’s lab in the basement, holding it up, Barry waves him in and moves to open a cabinet stuffed with half-full orange pharmacy bottles. The original patient labels are torn off roughly, or scratched through with black marker. He catches Kravitz staring, and shrugs. “Confidentiality.” He takes a few out, shaking the candy-colored pills inside, before tossing a bottle of plain white tablets to Kravitz, who looks at it skeptically. 

“It’s just aspirin,” he says. “No need to put him on the hard stuff.”

Kravitz still isn’t sure what to think about Barry; the belted jeans and collared shirts are more dorky dad than mad scientist, and mostly, he just seems to spend his time worrying—about everyone in sight, but Taako in particular. The disinfectant smell down here, the greenish tint of the light, the way the bunker-thick walls muffle all sound— it all unsettles Kravitz, but he lingers, not quite ready to go back upstairs.

Barry gestures at a metal stool, and Kravitz sits awkwardly, hooking his feet behind the metal rungs and turning the bottle of pills in his hands.

“I could use some help,” Barry says.

“I failed chemistry,” Kravitz replies.

“Well, all I’ve got today is paperwork. That more your speed?”

Kravitz smiles at the unexpected joke, and then remembers the charts on Taako’s kitchen counter, stamped with Barry’s messy signature, and it fades. Barry’s back is to him, picking up a notepad that he brings over and drops between them. Kravitz sits there, and they’re both silent for a while, listening to the scratch of Barry’s pen as he goes over what looks like an inventory of supplies. 

“About Taako,” Barry finally says without looking up. “I lost someone important to me, too. A while ago.” He doesn’t put his pen down, but his eyes drift over Kravitz’ shoulder to the wall behind him, unfocused as if he’s trying to look into the next room. Barry sighs, looking back at Kravitz. “I can’t let go of her, and there are times I think that’s made me a worse person. But Taako’s stronger than me; he always has been.”

Kravitz nods, picking at the remaining label on the bottle and dropping the paper in a neat pile in front of him. Barry’s probably right, but sometimes he’s not sure how to care for this loss, or if Taako even wants him to. He felt like he had begun to settle into a constellation, before: Taako, his friends, and Kravitz who might be something more. But now—he isn’t sure where he fits. And he misses Magnus, too. Magnus was a good man who he had wanted to get to know better—which is nothing, he knows, compared to how Taako feels.

The label is almost gone, in pieces in front of him, and he feels the glue under his fingernails. Part of him is grateful that what Taako wants is space: Kravitz in the room, but not in his bed; to talk, but not to tell him what happened. “I’m sorry” and “Are you ok” are safe, which is good, because it’s been so long since anything like this was asked of Kravitz that he’s not always sure what else to say. His life is work—it keeps him away constantly and requires him to mine what’s left of his relationships for material, and that’s too much for most people to handle. He guiltily remembers the piece he’s supposed to be writing, the texts from Corva he’s ignored. Putting more eyes on Taako’s grief feels intolerable, and the thought of trying to find a word for the exact shade of blue of his lips against the concrete—

When he finally goes back upstairs, Taako’s still asleep, and he sits the bottle next to him on the bedside table and leaves the room.

 

Once he returns to the present, Taako waits, but Magnus doesn’t come back. It had been days before, but he always returned, stealing a cup from over Taako’s shoulder in the Balance cafeteria or interrupting his tanning session on the patio with something dorky like “hail and well met”. Taako felt from the moment he watched a seam in their known world close over his body that he wouldn’t return this time, but whenever he turns a corner or wakes up from a nap and is confronted with only shadows, it aches a bit. So he spends a lot of time sitting out on the patio in the sun, waiting. Kravitz sits beside him, sometimes, but he doesn’t understand, exactly; to him death is an answered question in a way that it isn’t for Taako, anymore. Kravitz understands that he is grieving, but not that he is waiting.

 

Taako’s vigil comes to an end in the early morning, two weeks after Magnus died for good. As the walls of his room begin to color with the earliest blue of dawn, he sits up in bed and wraps his arms around his knees. Kravitz had fallen asleep beside him, but he’s careful even in sleep now, turned towards the wall so they won’t touch unless Taako moves for it.

He shifts quietly out of bed and heads for the shower, Kravitz’s borrowed t-shirt brushing against his thighs. The room slowly chilled overnight, and he turns the shower handle hard towards hot. As the shower fogs, he drags a finger down the glass, drawing a small break that soon fades back into cloud. For a while, he stands under the water without doing anything but staring at the wall, sometimes reaching out to trace the rough grout between tiles. Slowly, his body warms to meet the temperature of the water, skin reddening, but he turns it hotter, wanting to feel the reassuring sting, to wash the chill of Magnus’ body off his fingertips.

He doesn’t want to be the kid from a broken home anymore, the man who wears loss like clothing. He’s tried to trace that feeling down the source, recently, and it always seems to bottom out in things he can’t recall, seemingly as component a part of him as bone. He might not be able to root it out, he thinks, but he has a choice now—he could add this grief for Magnus as confirmation, heavy enough that he might not make it out, or he could try somehow to move forward. Small steps, for now. He reaches out for the plastic bottle of shampoo and starts working it into a foam against his scalp, eyes closed as the water rinses suds down his back.

When he finally comes out of the shower, the sun is rising and Kravitz is awake, blinking sleepily out the window as he watches the colors turn. Taako feels a sudden fondness for the way he’s clutching the sheets under his chin, his body falling back on animal habits until it’s awake enough to coordinate into his usual composure. When Kravitz sees him, he startles. “Hey, Taako. I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to fall asleep here. I’m going back to my room now, I just wanted to make sure you were—ok.”

Taako shakes his head, and crawls into bed to sit beside him. “No, you should stay. I want you to stay.”

They’re quiet, for a while, Taako’s head on Kravitz’ shoulder as he stares out the window at the flat, brightening desert. Then, he whispers: “I miss him.”

“I know." Kravitz hesitates, gently kissing the nearest side of his forehead. "Want to talk about it?”

“Not yet.”

After a while, they drift back to sleep, but soon Kravitz wakes up to a low buzz and a glow spreading in the pocket of his pants on the floor. Someone has texted his personal phone. When he picks it up, he sees a message from an unknown number: _Kravitz, it’s Lucretia. Can we talk in my office?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDITED 11/20: I originally published this chapter with a (wall-of-text) note explaining how and why I had changed the way I tagged the main characters from when I first posted this piece. I’m removing it because I think that at this point returning readers will have hopefully seen it, and it doesn’t apply to new readers … trying to keep things streamlined, but I’m happy to repost if anyone didn’t see it or would like an explanation.


	6. Chapter 6

After Kravitz stares at the text from Lucretia for a moment, he gently shakes Taako awake, handing him his phone. Whatever Lucretia wants him to know, he wants Taako to know too. Without a word, they both stand up and head through the echoing concrete halls to Lucretia’s office in the basement.

She looks mildly surprised to see Taako. “Taako—I didn’t realize you were up and about yet.” Then, she sighs. “I suppose this forces my hand. But maybe that’s a good thing. Barry—“ she glances over to a shadowed corner of the room, where Barry is slumped in a chair, “—is he strong enough to remember?”

Barry sits up straight, looking at her in shock. “Now?” She nods firmly. “Uh—I mean, it’s not ideal. But yeah, if he’s up and moving around, I think he can handle you breaking it.”

“Excuse me—as the break-ee here, what the fuck are you talking about?” Taako asks.

“Think of it like a mental blindfold,” Lucretia answers evenly. “There are things we both know that I had to keep from you, until you were ready. I think you are ready; if you agree, you may close your eyes to begin.”

Taako looks over at Kravitz; Kravitz doesn’t understand or trust what she’s saying, but it’s not his choice to make. He reaches out and squeezes Taako’s hand. Hesitantly, Taako closes his eyes—and Lucretia begins to explain.

 

She was a grad student, alone in the lab, the first time she measured a soul. It wasn’t something that registered with a solid weight like a lump of quartz, or even something you could measure by its traces, like the confetti thrown by two particles slammed together in an accelerator. Nonetheless, there it was on the paper in front of her, a glow in the developed film apparent when she stared in the center, but whose edges disappeared as her eyes sought them out. And that—that meant she was right: the soul existed, distinct from the body, and if she was careful enough she could filter it out and catch in her hands the pure essence of life.

Extraction was the problem. Would it precipitate out, like salt from a glass of water left on a windowsill? Or were the soul and the body in natural tension, oil and water, eager to come unmixed?

The rest of the department at her university was wary of her work. It was a commonly accepted theory that consciousness expands and contracts through ringed states of existence, some represented in our minds (waking life, dreams, meditation) and some inaccessible to us in daily life (the afterlife). Lucretia’s theory, however—that only the limitations of the body keep the soul from moving freely among these planes—strayed dangerously close to immortality research, and there were too many stories: rogue scientists replicating themselves in robots, saving severed heads to be awakened after the apocalypse, injecting themselves with young blood. Eventually, a few of the deans gave her permission to form a research group, as long as she didn’t claim the official blessing of the university. She named it the Institute for Psychic Research and Exploration (an innocuous IPRE, on forms), and now she just needed recruits.

When Taako and his twin sister Lup came into her lab, smart and bored undergrads chasing a science requirement, she knew immediately that they were perfect. They completely ignored her first lecture, leaning against each other and laughing about the notes they wrote each other in their shared notebook. Their souls seemed closer to the surface than most people, somehow; their spirits comfortably extended right up to their skin, bright and quick, bodies worn lightly. Merle and Magnus came next, each transparent to the world in a way she sought to quantify line by line in her notebook.

Taako was the first one to succeed. He was meditating cross-legged on the linoleum floor in the middle of the lab; he had been under for three hours, and the others were draped across the lab stools in boredom, taking a few notes but mostly distracting themselves: Lup tapping likes on her phone, Merle drawing faces on the diagrams in his botany textbook. Dusk was falling outside, and the campus safety lights began to snap on one after the other, illuminating Taako’s face. Suddenly, he stopped breathing. Lup noticed first, jumping up and calling for the others. _“It’s happening,”_ Lucretia said, and they all went still, standing in a loose circle around Taako. In the dim light, they realized he had begun to glow slightly, as if the fine hairs on his skin were catching a more distant light. And then Lup broke the quiet, pushing Lucretia’s arm away. _“He’s been out too long, Luc. It’s not safe.”_ Lucretia moved to stop her, but Lup ran for the defibrillator kit strapped to the wall of the lab, pushed her brother to the ground as Magnus slid a blanket under his head, and jumpstarted his heart again. When he opened his eyes, he was grinning. _“That was some next-level shit.”_

That autumn evening was their first death; Lup was next, and then each of them followed and repeated, pushing a little deeper each time but always returning. At first, it just seemed like they were moving through blackness, small lights sometimes bumping along what felt like corners and edges in the dark. Over time, with more practice, they learned to enter these realms without meditating so deeply that their hearts stopped. But eventually they ran up against a barrier realm, a kind of psychic thermocline which reflected their own minds back to them. Lucretia compared it to purgatory in her notes, a place just past the limits of their individual consciousnesses. Pushing into it required enormous and dangerous energy, and the deeper they went, the more vulnerable they became to taking on real damage from the forms they found there, seemingly energies pulling them towards a more final death as if holding their heads underwater. They had all screwed up before, flickering straight into the afterlife from lower planes, and Lucretia was able to restart their hearts; but if they took on enough damage from these purgatory forms, she warned, she wouldn’t be able to recover them.

Lucretia noticed how these new journeys exhausted them. A few times, Lup left the lab on Friday night to sleep straight through the weekend. They all seemed to be developing nervous compulsions; Taako snuck bites of food to check it before serving anyone, and Magnus picked at the seam of his sleeves with his thumb until they unraveled. Eventually, she had to acknowledge that they were holding onto their deaths in ways she didn’t fully understand. People weren’t meant to pass in and out of life like this, and their bodies were accumulating the trauma.

 

“This next part will be hard to hear, Taako,” Lucretia says, but she can tell by the look on his face that he has already started to remember. “Eventually, I made a mistake.”

 

When they decided to learn how to travel in pairs, of course Taako and Lup were the first to volunteer. When Lucretia put them down for a timeslot, they traded an increasingly elaborate secret handshake that had started as a joke but seemed to be sticking around. Barry, a pre-med student who had started acting as the team’s unofficial doctor, rolled his eyes at them from the lab bench, but when Lup winked at him he blushed.

Lucretia tries to speed up the memory of that night for Taako’s sake, but there’s not much she can do. And so they’re watching it again, together, as Lup and Taako lie down on the floor side by side and take each other’s hands; they’re watching as slight glows surround their bodies, and then—combine, in a way they’ve never seen, like two drops of mercury slipping into each other. Lucretia and Barry look at each other, their mouths open, and then, as the clock hits the 45-second mark, they begin to panic. _“What the fuck do we do,”_ Barry shouts. They have to wake them up, _now_ —but each body must have a soul return to survive. Barry is frozen; either loss is intolerable. Lucretia has a choice to make, alone. Lup’s body is weaker, she knows; Lucretia has seen the way she’s struggling lately, dark circles under her eyes that never fade. As she steps towards Taako, Barry cries out, _“Lucretia, you can’t! Please, you have to save them both.”_ The timer hits 0:55; she places the small device she had built to act as a kind of emergency spiritual magnet on Taako’s chest, and flicks the switch. The soul—their soul—melts into him.

 

“You and Lup—twins—we didn’t realize how close you truly were. You shared two halves of the same soul, and when we released them at the same time, it recombined. I had 30 seconds, Taako. If I did nothing, you were both going to die. I chose you.”

 

Lucretia saw no easy way out of that night. Hasty research confirmed that the only way to split them was for Taako to enter the afterlife, harnessing its unique gravity that pulls souls to their true form, but there was no way to bring two souls out of the door one soul made. She knew Taako would try anyway, and she couldn’t allow any more deaths.

At 5 am, she called the team into her lab and wiped their memories of the work, and then Lup, and then each other. All it took was a modified form of the basic hypnosis she had learned in a graduate seminar; even she was surprised how easily their eyes went blank, how silent Taako was as she walked him through dewy grass at sunrise back to his apartment. When they graduated, she brought them back together for what she thought might be a start of a real life in the world: for Taako and Magnus (one a dance minor, one a theatre minor) and Merle (night school photography student), interviews for work on a successful TV show.

 

“Her heart”, Lup had called him. Taako remembers that now. It suddenly makes sense, the twinning he sometimes feels in himself when faced with an important moment, as if another part of him nudges himself towards the right thing. He felt it when he saw Kravitz step into the diner, as if two hands were pushing against his back towards this stranger. He digs desperately in himself to feel that part, to isolate it so he can name it and hold it— _Lup_ —but it’s like trying to separate water. So he focuses on the new-found memories of her instead: their hands wrapped together at 9 years old when he had been sure he was alone, her face tilted up to catch the sunlight as they walked to the last class before he woke up an only child in an empty apartment.

They’re followed in a rush by memories of Magnus, falling asleep on Taako’s notes in the lab, glancing at the way this new contestant's sequined dress sparkled over his hips as he asked Taako  _“Have we met before?” (“Does that line usually work for you?”)_

As he turns to face Lucretia, his voice is low, full of spit and venom.

“You took _everything_ from me. _Twice_.  For what? For some experiment, so you could get first prize in the science fair?”

And then he goes for her, lunging over the desk and grabbing the throat of her robe in his hands.

Barry jumps up to separate them. “Fuck. Taako, don’t!”

 

Shortly after Taako entered the room, and Lucretia began to explain, Barry sat down on a chair in the corner and put his head in his hands.

Barry had never forgotten Lup. Lucretia couldn’t find him that night before she wiped the rest; he was slumped in the corner of a bar, hours into a bender—his own kind of hypnosis, though it didn't last. When he burst into her office days later, demanding to know what she did with Lup’s body and why his friends didn’t even remember her name, she was defeated enough to tell him. When he begged her to at least let him keep the memory of Lup, she was tired enough to agree—as long as he promised not to tell. There was nothing they could do, and it was up to him to let his friends have some peace. Then, years later, Lucretia made him promise a second time: there might be something she could do after all, but they had to bring the three of them back to restart the work—and if he told, he would ruin everything. So he stayed close, and he stayed quiet, and did his best to keep his friends alive. At his lowest points, he envied the precise void she had made in them.

All the while, Lup was still so close to him—memories of her always at the front of his mind, and her body in the basement, cryogenically preserved one room away from his lab. He had only let himself look at her exactly once since Lucretia put her to rest. As soon as he wiped the frost off the glass, he realized that he had aged, and she was lying there with the exact same face: the face that stuck out her tongue at him over their lunch table, called him “nerd” so often it became a term of endearment, and whispered her love to him in the darkness, her hips pressed against his in a narrow bed.

Looking at Taako now, Lup’s face takes over his mind and he silently begs for her forgiveness. He had tried to keep her brother—her heart—safe the best he could, and he had failed.

Then, Taako is in Lucretia’s face, his eyes blank with a cruelty Lup would never recognize. He pulls Taako off and stands between them, and as Taako meets his eyes, he can see dawning in them for the first time an awareness of who he was—who they are to each other.

“Barry, let me fucking kill her.”

Behind them, Lucretia finally speaks. “Taako, you’ve suffered incomprehensible losses at my hands, and it’s impossible for me to apologize for them. But because of what you’ve done here, we might at last be able to bring Lup back. And you can’t do it without my help.”

 

Her words shock Taako still, and Kravitz goes cold watching it. Her voice is unreadable, and they all know she’s claimed the only possible thing she could use to get more out of Taako—a long shot too valuable to lose. “If ...  _if_ you’re telling the truth,” Taako ventures hoarsely, “what would that mean? And could we bring back Magnus, too?”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter hits that Mature rating towards the end, in a scene I've set off with dotted lines, since there's a bit of power negotiation as a way to work through anxiety (100% consensual and tender, as always in this story).

Late one night in her lab, roughly two years after Lup died and she erased her friends’ memories, Lucretia was skimming through the static of planar noise as if browsing radio stations when she caught something strange: an energy blip that seemed somehow … person-like. Immediately, her body went cold. No-one had learned to travel after her team; she knew that from exhaustive subscriptions to academic journals. This was impossible, unless—had they broken her hypnosis? Her fingers shook as she focused in closer, and fed the signal through a translation algorithm. And then, as the noise filled her headphones, the cold in her stomach twisted and she burst into tears. It was unmistakably Lup’s voice, clipped out of context, innocuous as a voicemail. _“The lesson he’s learning about friendship is worth way more than $15, anyway.”_

Lucretia replayed it again and again. Days later, the sound still shook her, lifelike enough to fool even death. Her mind grabbed at the thought, stumbled back insistently as if pulling on her sleeve. To fool death. And then it hit her: she had given up on saving Lup because, even if they could split Taako’s soul in the afterlife, there was no way to bring them both back through the door the single soul had created. But what if a second soul passed through with them? She wouldn’t sacrifice another person. But what if this remnant energy, made bigger somehow, could act as a decoy and open up a second door? Her mind began to race. The four IPRE travelers must have each left behind their own accidental psychic fingerprint, somewhere, as Lup did—their own relic, as it were. She would have to do the math, but—and now she was grabbing for scrap paper on her desk—combined, it just might be enough to convincingly approximate a real soul.

As she stared at her work a few hours later, her stomach sank. The math was clear: combined, four fingerprints might barely be enough, but the hands who made them were the only ones who could retrieve them. Only Merle, Magnus, and Taako, with Lup’s energy, could attract them strongly enough to bring back for her to siphon into something usable. After another hour of consideration, she called Barry at 6 am, sipping too-hot coffee from a styrofoam cup. “Find Merle first. Offer him a job—make one up. We’ll go to him. He will convince the others to come.”

A few weeks later, in a lab she had hastily made out of a foreclosed luxury spa in New Mexico, she dwelled on every remembered detail of their faces while pretending to meet them for the first time. Taako and Magnus were adults, now, instead of the kids she remembered—and, it pained her to realize, they were more shadowed somehow. Taako kept stealing glances at Magnus that he didn’t return. Magnus still kept his body in small motion at all times, fiddling an empty gum wrapper from his pocket into a twisted bird shape as she talked. Her hypnosis should have cleared their trauma, but this was something—residual? Or different? In any case, they were much stronger than when she last saw them, and this time, she knew enough to teach them to travel again without dying.

“So, this job,” Taako said, breaking the silence as he looked skeptically at the crystals and self-help books arranged tastefully on Lucretia’s desk. “What’s the starting salary? And Taako’s going to need you to be chill about the vacation policy.”

 

At first, it was easy, and they believed her—believed that together, they were breaking the bonds of life and death, psychic astronauts setting first foot on the soil of new worlds. Two relics claimed. But then: the lying crystal that spread like a virus, and afterwards, Merle in the corner of the cafeteria for weeks failing to close his fingers around a rubber ball. Refuge—the familiar paleness of their faces, 11 deaths she signed off on and filed away in the cabinet behind her. Three relics claimed.

 

“Everything I did, I did so we could bring Lup back. I knew that's what you would have wanted, Taako.”

“No, Lucretia, you didn't know—you assumed,” Taako says, staring down at the same desk now cleared of the pretense of knick-knacks.

Kravitz can’t tell if Lucretia is voicing her own denial, or is still trying to manipulate Taako, but either way she’s picked the wrong person to play word games with.

“You took the choice away from us. And the worst part is that you know the choices we would have made. Lup is my _sister_. And Magnus rushes in, remember? The second there’s someone to save, he’s already there. We would have done anything to get her back. But you were too scared to trust anyone else with your grand plan, so you didn’t let us choose. And the worst part about _that_ is you didn’t let Magnus die for himself, or for us—you made him die for you.”

For the first time, Lucretia is temporarily crushed into silence. She looks down at her desk, tracing a small shape on the wood to collect herself.

“Taako, I— _I couldn’t_ _tell you_. I saw what our work did to all of you the first time around. For any of this to be possible, I had to reset it somehow—if you were still carrying that damage with you every day, there’s no way you could have made it through Refuge or Wonderland.”

“ _Reset_ it? I see a lot of fucking damage in this room, Lucretia. And Magnus didn’t make it out, did he? So how’s that plan working out?”

There’s a long silence.

Finally, Barry steps forward. “But we have all your relics. We have a chance to bring Lup back now.”

Taako turns to him. “You're sure? And—what about Magnus?”

Lucretia shakes her head slowly. “We might be able to return Lup because her soul is safe in you, and if the decoy works we will be able to bring both of you back. Even if you could find Magnus in time without taking on too much damage, the doors couldn’t fit the three of you—and in any case, he has too much damage to come back to life in his body. Which,” she hesitates, “has been laid to rest, anyhow.”

Taako’s stomach drops. Right. After almost two weeks with no sign, they had given Magnus his last rites. Taako had pulled back the sheet, kissed his artificially chilled forehead, and left the room so he didn’t have to see what happened next. His heart starts to race. It was his fault, it was too soon, he shouldn’t have given up hope—

Barry clears his throat, jamming his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. “I, uh—I might not have done that part.”

Lucretia spins to face him, eyes wide. “You _what_?”

After Taako, Kravitz, and Lucretia had left the room that day, Barry tucked the sheet gently back around Magnus. This damage was beyond his power to repair; Lucretia had walked patiently through the charts with him as many times as he needed to convince himself of that. But after he wheeled the gurney out the door, he took a wrong turn anyway, and slid Magnus’ body into an unmarked cold storage bay beside Lup’s compartment. Late at night, he brought him back to his lab, working painstakingly to coax his body back into order. Psychic damage was beyond the skill of most surgeons, manifesting itself in the body in ways that seemed more poetic than scientific; instead of a direct translation—fire burns skin—it created metaphors for itself. Magnus, for some reason, had—splintered inside, like a window hit by a rock. His nerves sparked some places and not in others, activity distributed too grainily to give clear signals to his body. Barry worked painstakingly to connect the gaps. He doesn’t know if he made much progress.

“Sorry, Taako. I couldn’t tell you. ‘Cause then I’d have to explain you had to go back for Lup, and you didn’t remember, or you’d try to use the relics right then and ruin our only shot—“

Taako should be furious at this latest lie added to the pile. But they might have a _chance_ —and that, combined with how obviously rattled Lucretia is, flushes him hot with excitement.

“Barry, you wonderful, sneaky man. You might be worthy of my sister one day, after all.”

Barry blushes. Lucretia rubs the bridge of her nose with clenched fingers.

“Lucretia, how big exactly will this door be?”

“It’s impossible to say. According to my calculations, bigger than two souls, but I don't think large enough for three,” she admits. “I fear this might present you with a difficult choice.”

“But it’s _my_ choice, Lucretia. And if there’s any chance I can bring them both back, I have to try.”

Kravitz speaks up for the first time. “Even if it all works, what’s to stop Taako and Lup’s souls from recombining as soon as they come back from the afterlife?”

Lucretia nods. “It will be difficult. We need an anchor for Taako—something to draw him back towards himself—” She looks at Kravitz more closely, titling her head.

Taako shakes his head emphatically before Kravitz can answer. “Absolutely not. That’s way too dangerous. I can resist it on my own—Taako’s pretty into Taako, if you hadn’t noticed.”

Lucretia doesn’t react to the joke. “I promise I can guide his meditation so he can safely reach where he needs to wait.”

“Let me do this for you,” Kravitz asks softly, to Taako and no-one else. “You’re going to do something amazing, and I want to help.”

The room is silent, and after a moment Taako reaches for his hand. Kravitz has given so much; this is too much. He hasn’t done this before, much less fucked it up, felt his mind stripped bare of his skin before blinking out, dark energy on his raw form like fingers in a wound—he can’t know what he’s offering. But Kravitz looks determined, and so Taako nods, trying to hide his worry. “Thanks, handsome. That face’ll be hard to ignore.”

Then, he turns back to Lucretia. “But first, show me what you’ve got. Proof, or we promise nothing.”

Lucretia pulls out a thin set of keys to unlock the second drawer down in the file cabinet behind her. Pushing past well-thumbed file folders, she lifts out a small box wrapped in neat, plain leather. It’s closed with a complicated lock she spins open with a practiced fingernail, and then she sets it on the desk between them. Inside are four glass tubes, packed precisely in foam, each glowing with strands of blue like trapped lightning that shift from each contact with the glass.

Taako is familiar; he reaches out a finger to tap the side of the nearest tube, and it eagerly clots around his touch, a fake bell taken apart. Taako leaves his finger for a moment, fogging the glass as his lips tighten at the memory, and then he looks up at Lucretia. “Fuck it. Let’s do this.”

Lucretia snaps the box closed, snuffing out the small light. “Thank you, Taako. Give me the night to combine the relics, and we’ll start first thing in the morning.”

 

No matter what bookends it, a whole night together feels like some room to breathe. Back in his room, Taako falls back heavily against the wall, seeking out a bent rectangle of sunset light that doesn’t give much warmth.

As the adrenaline of standing up to Lucretia wears off, the scale of what he has yet to remember gives him a headache. All Lucretia did was untie his hands; he’s gained the ability to remember, but not the memories themselves. What he has so far are only the simple facts Lucretia told him: I have a sister, who died. I knew Magnus before. That last one feels like a loose thread that could pull apart an entire seam, so he leaves it alone for now. He needs to stay in control.

Deep breaths aren’t helping. He’s only beginning to realize how much he’s really lost, and now Kravitz has put himself on the line too if Taako fucks this up— 

Eyes still closed, he can hear Kravitz moving towards the door. Space isn’t what he needs, right now. Space could swallow him. 

“I want you to stay, Krav.”

\------------------------------------------------

When Taako opens his eyes, Kravitz has laid his shoes neatly against the wall, and is starting on the buttons of his shirt, a set of pajamas folded on the bed. Taako is still, eyes following Kravitz’s careful fingers and breath slowing to match. Kravitz notices, goes slower, a charge building in the silence between them—but Taako doesn’t move for him, even as he slips the last button free. So he steps out of his pants, lays them neatly on a nearby chair, and turns to look at Taako. The light is fading from the room and Kravitz shivers in the chill, pinned by Taako’s gaze—and then Taako kicks off the wall and takes the hem of his shirt in his hands in one fluid motion, and heat floods Kravitz as Taako’s fingers graze the skin just above his hips, touching himself the way Kravitz wants to.

 

Kravitz always has so many buttons to undo, and he’s only in a t-shirt. _Advantage, Kravitz,_ Taako thinks. So he substitutes nonchalance for the technique that set Kravitz’s pace, lifting his shirt one inch at a time as he drags his fingers over his skin, ever more casual as Kravitz’s quickening breath asks him to go faster. The way Kravitz holds his gaze, eyes reverent, and nervously bites his bottom lip—Kravitz, who’s been so good about not pushing him—is the small tug towards a good thing that quiets the static in his head.

 

Once he’s undressed, Kravitz moves for him, but Taako shakes his head and crooks an eyebrow. “I thought I asked you to stay.”

Kravitz nods eagerly, but it’s maddening, staying stuck as Taako comes closer just to grab a bottle of lube from the bedside table and then finds a limber position on the cushioned ledge in front of the window, touching himself open. Kravitz watches, breath catching in the quiet room as Taako’s body is backlit by the bright rising moon. Finally, Taako arcs with an involuntary moan and calls hoarsely for Kravitz and he’s there, kissing him hard as Taako reaches for him. At the touch of his still-slick fingers, Kravitz closes his eyes and makes a small sound before catching himself. 

Over the past weeks he’s seen Taako’s body frantic, letting go of his own skin in grief. Kravitz wants this so much that there’s a small shake in his fingers, but it would crush him to be just a distraction. He offered all of himself in Lucretia’s office, and he wants Taako to accept it, if he’s ready. “Um.” Taako stops, looking at him. “Is this a good idea?”

Taako sighs. “Look, everything you’ve done, what you’re about to do—it means a lot, you protecting me. But I need you to trust me.”

That’s not what Kravitz wanted to hear, exactly, but Taako’s right, so he nods. 

“Then trust me when I tell you—“ Taako leans in, brushing lips over Kravitz’ ear that make him painfully ready: “I want you to fuck me so bad right now.”

 

Kravitz moans and grabs his face in both hands to pull him into a firm kiss, slipping his tongue into his mouth, and Taako gratefully gets a little lost in it. Kravitz’s hands are so needy, following every line of him like he wants to memorize it, that soon he’s half-gone chasing friction against Kravitz—and Kravitz grabs his hips firmly, pulling away.

“You made a specific request, and I intend to honor it,” he says with a smirk.  _Chivalry isn’t dead_ , Taako is about to joke, but the denial is a good twist in his stomach and then Kravitz is kissing him speechless as he asks, “Are you ready?” 

“Uh huh,” Taako breathes, words finally failing him, head still.

While Kravitz goes for a condom, Taako turns, putting a palm against the glass. The cold keeps him here, just like the want does, every hair on his skin sensitive to the slightest brush of Kravitz’ lips on his back when he returns. Beneath them, the desert floor stretches dim and endless towards hidden mountains, and just as Taako feels drawn out into the dark Kravitz enters him slowly, a steadying hand on his hip. 

Soon, Taako can feel the moment Kravitz’s control breaks as he tangles a hand in his hair to pull just enough when Taako asks, thrusting deeper to harmonize with the slight sting. He fucks harder as Taako melts into the pressure, body loose and hot, the contrast between Kravitz’s rough pace and the soft way he moans Taako’s name setting him on fire. Taako chases the coming edge to get out of his head, but the space he leaves behind fills with an urgent tenderness and then he’s swearing _Fuck, Kravitz_ , voice breaking.

Their breath fogs the window, condensing into a wetness that coats Taako’s lips as he slumps into the glass. He doesn’t realize he’s begging until Kravitz does what he says and takes him in his hand; when he comes apart Taako feels like he’s falling into the desert below, but he collects himself around Kravitz, and as Kravitz follows Taako feels the teeth of a grimace against his shoulder—and then, the whisper of _I love you_ on his skin. 

Taako’s chest tightens in surprised recognition, but he can’t be both the one who loves Kravitz and the one who loses him in the dark. A memory of the black tear that swallowed Magnus dispels the pleasant haze in his head like sun on fog. Taako stays quiet, fumbling out a hand that Kravitz grabs as he catches breath against him, and focuses on everything he hopes is waiting when he wakes up.

\------------------------------------------------

A few hours later, Kravitz comes to in a place that is dark but doesn’t feel empty. It’s as if he opened his eyes in a familiar room late at night and is waiting for his eyes to adjust, but they never do. Beside him is a large glow, diffuse but purposeful, that he knows is Taako, pushing its way ahead of him, dodging psychic furnishings he can’t see. He moves to follow, but feels a tug he recognizes as Lucretia, telling him to stay in place. 

Moving is hard here, in a way that feels strange in a dimensionless space where he can’t mark progress—it almost feels like his mind is out of breath. He’s only here, in any case, as a signpost. _Be still,_ Lucretia had instructed him. _Focus on Taako_. And so he does; the glow has drifted what he would call up if he had anything to mark it against, and looks smaller. Suddenly it pauses, and then slips sideways into the darkness. 

Taako is gone, again, and all he can do is wait. He feels panic take him over, and Lucretia’s guidance tugs at him again in a way he guesses means _calm down_. He tries but he’s not quite sure how to comfort this distilled form; emotions are hard to localize, taking him over entirely. Finally he imagines himself as a shaken glass of water going still, anxiety settling to the bottom like dirt. It works, a bit, and he focuses upwards, waiting for Taako to return.


	8. Chapter 8

Barry brings two gurneys in under fluorescent lights and wheels them to a stop in front of Taako, matter-of-fact with clinical practice like he’s taking steaks out of a freezer. As Kravitz rubs a comforting hand across his lower back, Taako realizes he’s shaking.

He goes to uncover their faces, but Lucretia stops him— _it would be too much_ —and Taako isn’t taking her word anymore, on principle, but she’s probably right about this.

He looks at the smaller form he trusts is Lup, and a thought surprises him: _I’m here, you’re here._ It’s something they started saying to each other as kids, he remembers, when another distant cousin kicked them out and the contagious thought would come to each of them in turn that they were the worse twin. Until, one morning, he stumbled home late again and Lup grabbed his face, wiped smudged mascara from under his eyes, and asked him to make a promise.

And beside her, Magnus _—_ a familiar hill, his solid body barely hidden by a twin-sized sheet Barry stole from upstairs. His fingertips are poking out from the edge of the fabric, and Taako walks over and laces their fingers together, pressing tightly though he knows he’ll get nothing back.

Kravitz sits down on the floor behind them, knees bending a little awkwardly, and closes his eyes, hands crossed in his lap. Taako looks around the room: three pairs of closed eyes, lives in his hands, and Barry and Lucretia staring at him over the still bodies. Lucretia is clutching the small leather box of relics so tightly that the skin around her fingernails is going pale.

Taako leans over and gives Kravitz a quick, closed-mouth kiss before plunging into the freezing water of the planes, holding onto the warm jump he gets from Kravitz's goofy half-smile for as long as he can. The last thing he feels before going under is a strange doubling at the thought of someone he loves waiting for him on the other side of the dark.

 

When Taako comes to, he hops up lower levels of awareness like stairs, following an instinct towards Magnus to a weak spot. 

He knocks against it and he’s back in Wonderland again, grey fog hiding anything beyond the immediate chaos in front of him. Lydia’s torn dress is in the grass, loose sequins mixing with the shattered glass from the stage lights. It’s a greeting, he thinks bitterly, a sarcastic hand wave, even though he can’t feel the spirits close by. He walks over and grinds it into the dirt. Dry-clean _that_. He picks up one of the prop champagne glasses from a nearby table and takes a sip—dishwater. He spits it out, and then overturns the entire tray with one finger.

Inside the production tent, the bank of monitors are cracked and blinking noise. The ground is a mess of cables and glass it sickens him to look at, but the two directors’ chairs and two podiums are untouched. He approaches the podiums slowly, his heart in his throat, and on top of what had been Magnus’s is a script, curled open to the last page; it’s a transcript of their last moments here, and beside the final lines of dialogue is a handwritten note: _It’s a series wrap on Magnus. -L &E_

Taako’s vision whites out, and he turns to hurl the script at the directors’ chairs. It lands unharmed in the grass with a soft thud, and that makes him angrier. He’s breathing hard, and he has to remind himself what he came here for; they’re trying to hurt him, to weaken him, and he’s making it too easy. 

He turns back between the podiums, and now he sees it—an odd spot in the air between them. He extends a hand, but trying to push through this barrier is like nothing he’s ever felt; he barely notices any resistance from the lower levels anymore, and passing here to purgatory feels like thin ice breaking beneath his weight. This boundary is sheer but solid, fabric he’ll have to tear with bare hands. 

He makes a movement that would be something like a determined swallow if he were in his body, and casts out a tentative call for the decoy soul. He feels good feedback and tries harder, and eventually it comes into view, nudging shyly through the canvas flaps of the tent. 

It’s almost close enough when it catches suddenly, grabbed backwards by something, and then he sees a shadow that looks like a cartoonishly thin hand creep around the edge and dig in its claws. “Not so fast,” he hears in a self-amused tone he recognizes instantly, and a figure steps into view, leaning back against the decoy to keep it from Taako.

“Ghoul isn’t a good look on you, Edward,” Taako spits, and the figure tuts a long finger at him.

“And Lydia. Don’t be rude—you’re not the only twins who can share a body. It’s quite a fun idea, really; we’d never seen it until you showed up. We would have asked for pointers, but your rudeness didn’t exactly allow for a civilized exchange.” 

Of course; the plane always materializes an enemy that is his own mirror. 

“We’ve never been closer. Finishing each other’s sentences was getting tedious, anyway; now we share the same voice. Granted, that _was_ sort of our favorite bit when we entertained company, but this is so much more convenient.” The twins grins, looking sharply at Taako. “Besides, now we’ll never be alone. Why would you ever want to give that up?”

Their words fill him entirely for a moment, and they lean forward, sensing it. “You already lost the handsome friend you came in with, and you don’t look strong enough to fix that little hiccup. What if she leaves, too, when she finds out you’re not exactly a hero? That Lucretia picked the wrong twin?”

Suddenly there’s a push within himself, and this close to the afterlife he can almost _feel_ Lup—solid as a shoulder bumping his, letting him know he’s being ridiculous. He makes another deep-breath motion to firm up his mind against the energy that has begun to crackle lazily in front of him, ready for a real fight if words aren’t enough.

“Seems like you should hold on to what you’ve got, Taako.”

“It would be a crime to deprive the world of twice the hotness,” he says, and feels fire beneath his fingertips. He focuses on the memory of the looping video blurred by his tears, what they did to Magnus, and sharpens the urge to send this whole place up in flames. There’s an eerie light glowing on the too-green grass between him and the twins now, each blade standing perfectly straight. Taako knows what he has to do, but he’s frozen by 12 times before like a muscle instinct locking his knees from jumping off a cliff. He thinks back to times he woke up before his mind did, paralyzed on a thin blanket on the laboratory floor, and Lup or Magnus had their arms tightly around him; his body melts now like it did then, opening a grateful passage to the dark. 

Taako calls out for fire, and he jumps.

 

Like every time before, he doesn’t feel the moment he comes apart. There’s overwhelming heat and then overwhelming blank, both vast enough to unmake him. As he blinks back into himself, he feels cold, and for a desperate moment he thinks he’s back at Balance—he’s failed, it’s too soon to be back—and he feels a hand brush the hair out of his eyes. As he turns his head he sees Magnus, grinning broadly, kneeling beside him in a torn-up flannel shirt.

“I was right.” 

“What?” Taako asks, blinking.

“When you stepped out of the limo. I _had_ seen you before.” Magnus helps him up and pulls him into a tight hug, and then they’re laughing tearily as they hold each other. Magnus feels impossibly warm, slight scruff pricking Taako’s cheek as he runs a hand over the familiar, well-laundered softness of his shirt. Taako leans back, brushing a hand across his eyes.

“Wait, you remember that?”

“Yeah. I remember everything,” Magnus says, looking at him softly. Of course; death pulls every soul to its true nature. Lucretia’s hypnosis can’t extend this far. 

“Well, chalk one up for cheesy pick-up lines, my dude.” Magnus pulls him in for another hug, and Taako swears he can smell the drugstore shampoo Taako is always trying to upgrade in his hair. “Now, speaking of, how about we go back to my place?”

Magnus starts, looking at him. “Wait, we’re not— _dead_ dead? Edward and Lydia, I thought they—“

“No, I made it out. For a little while. And I came back for you and Lup.”

Magnus looks worried, and then confused, running his hands over Taako’s shoulders. “Taako, you shouldn’t—I didn’t want you to risk anything for me—“ He pauses. “Did you say _Lup_?” 

Taako recognizes the disorientation on his face; once reminded, it feels impossible to have forgotten. But he wasn’t there, that night. As he thinks back, Lup is there in his memories, waving as he left the lab early, and then she isn’t. Taako tries to explain what happened, and how they can fix it, as quickly as possible to spare Magnus the gut punch Lucretia gave him. He leaves out the fact that the doors might not fit them all. 

Magnus shakes his head in disbelief as Taako turns away and starts to cast around for the doors. “I’m really glad I didn’t get you killed, but that’s—intense, Taako. Are you ok?” Taako doesn’t answer. They’re silent for a while as Taako works, and then he hears Magnus tentatively say, “Hey, Taako—about what happened back there, in Wonderland—I’m sorry, if, you know. I’m sorry I didn’t notice, back then.” 

A sudden memory fogs Taako’s concentration: he opens his eyes, half-asleep, and Magnus is very close to him—close enough that he could wrap his arms around him—somewhere that smells faintly of cut grass? And it’s dark? But there’s no more, and Taako shakes his head. No time, right now.

He glances over his shoulder, and Magnus is looking intently at him, searching for something in his expression. Taako just shrugs. “It’s ok, my dude. We’re good.”

Finally, his hand catches on something: a weak spot in the planar boundary shaped exactly to him, covered over hastily with a thin film like plastic over a broken window. He feels around for another, and finds it close by—the decoy larger than the first, but not by double. Lucretia’s math was right, he realizes with a sinking feeling. It usually is. The damage he’s taken on has begun to blacken the edge of his vision, and he doesn’t know how much energy he has left. 

He glances over at Magnus, but the doors are lightness against white, and he doesn’t seem to have noticed anything wrong with the dimensions. Good. “Mags, switch with me?” 

Once he shuffles into place, Taako quickly waves him to turn his back to the doors, and then Taako nods, closes his eyes, and begins to take himself apart.

 

Taako and Lup always seemed similar, at first: they could give the same smile at the same time with their backs to each other, shared thoughts and feelings like their last name. It’s odd to feel that overlap made physical, now, an uncertainty Taako tastes like metal in his mouth as he locates it. He remembers the way Lucretia drew their souls on her whiteboard like a Venn diagram, and moves away from the center, clarifying what he knows is uniquely his and what is hers: his first death in a diamond mine, the way her eyes sparked with angry tears when grade school teachers called her a boy. 

“Magnus, can you talk about her? Anything you remember.” 

“Um. Well, the first thing that comes to mind are the many, many times you two hustled my ass playing pool.” 

Taako feels something become more defined in the air around him. “Yeah, that one’s kind of on you, my dude.” 

“Guess so. I’m not a sore loser, but she might be a sore winner, if that’s a thing?” Magnus chuckles fondly. “What about you?”

“She _made_ me go to college. Applied for both of us—made up my whole application plus an essay about how much I looked up to my amazing sister.”

He relaxes, letting the gravity of the afterlife pull Lup apart from him. 

_I’m here, you’re here,_ he thinks, remembering ice melting on the cheek of the body waiting for her, her eyelashes damp. Finally he’s tugging on the last few stitches at the seam of them, and as he grasps for the last one, time stops. 

He is 10 years old, she is 10, and they’re curled together in their narrow bed at their aunt’s house. He’s hazy from a nap, and he tugs on her pajama sleeve uncertainly as he hears their aunt yelling on the phone in the next room. Lup shakes her head and reaches out, putting her hands over his ears. Her palms are small, creating a cozy dome that echoes inside like a seashell. He begins to drift to sleep, reassured by her warmth radiating into the space between them—

Taako starts as Magnus curls a hand around his shoulder, and he pushes away against the place where they had begun to curve back into each other. He can see her, now, a doubled glow facing his own, hovering beside Magnus. It’s been too long since she’s been in a body to have a solid form here; he runs forward and tries to hug her anyway, and as she blinks eagerly his arms feel warmer where they touch, like he’s stuck them into a sunbeam. It’s the first time in a while he’s been able to tell her anything that isn’t just talking to himself, but all he can choke out is, _Welcome back, goofball_ , before the door behind them narrows slightly. 

Magnus sees his eyes dart nervously, and he follows them, turning to look at the doors and realizing what Taako hasn’t told him. 

“Oh, shit. No—no way, Taako. Come on, you two get out of here, I’ll be right behind you—“ And as Magnus reaches for him, rocking his feet off-balance, Taako gathers the last of his energy to push him and Lup backwards through the doors behind them.

“Leave the hero stuff to me this time, Mags.”

He hesitates for a moment, hands tangled in the frayed edges of the closing tear between worlds, watching their souls fall through the blackness below to what he can only hope is home. The door is reknitting smaller against his fingers—too small for him, now, and closing rapidly. 

 

Kravitz has no idea how long he’s been waiting in the dark, doing something like breathing to control his fear, when he sees the first light blink on above him and arc downwards. As it whistles past him, he senses Magnus, and if he had a fist to pump he would. Of course Taako can do this. Taako’s a badass. And then there’s Lup, too, shooting down from the darkness, and Kravitz fixates hopefully on the spot where she appeared. After a long moment there’s a flicker, at first, but it doesn’t take on the clarity of the others. It’s shifting, breaking up like a flashlight held between someone’s fingers; it seems to be—struggling. Kravitz rises slightly from himself in horror, watching Taako fight against a force he can’t see. And then, _fuck_ , the light just—goes out, leaving behind only an afterglow.

 

Taako pushes into the mending tear with everything he has left, but he tangles and is repulsed backwards, and the hardening edges tear into him like barbed wire. He’s too weak, and every time he struggles he takes on more damage. He stills, and looks down at the two distant lights. _Magnus will make it. Lup will make it_ , he repeats to himself a few times, and thinks of Kravitz with a love he hopes will make it out too. Darkness takes over his vision, pulling him backwards.

 

As the light above blinks out, Kravitz loses his hold on himself completely, nerves diffusing into the dark—Taako is dropping to the ground in front of him, again, loose braid falling over his face, and he can feel the pressure of Barry’s hands trapping him helplessly in place as he yells at them to _do something_. _Anything_ , except just letting him lie there, all the color Kravitz loves leaving his body. Taako is up there, somewhere, fighting for his life, and there’s no way Kravitz is going to let him lose. 

He can’t do what Taako does, so he just collects himself—all his rage and grief—and throws it towards the fading image of the light, coming apart again full of love.

 

As the timer marks 30 seconds, the halfway point for Taako's stopped heart, Barry and Lucretia trade a tense look over the bodies surrounding them. Magnus’s lips have started to pink up, Barry thinks, but he might be imagining it. As he stares intently down at Lup’s still face, he might begin to see her cheeks flush too, and he doesn’t trust himself, but if it’s real ... he’s beginning to contemplate the impossible as Kravitz’s fingers twitch against the linoleum floor, and he flatlines. Beside him, Taako is still gone, bloodless lips slightly parted. Barry throws himself on Kravitz, pushing hasty compressions, and as the monitor screams he looks frantically up at Lucretia. 

Her voice is sharp, arms crossed over her chest and eyes stuck on the timer. “Wait.”


	9. Chapter 9

Kravitz thuds into his body with a shudder, his head jerking back into the brittle give of linoleum beneath him. “Clear!” someone shouts as lightning crumples his chest, and then he’s coughing as Barry lifts up the paddles. Lights above him flood his vision white as his jaw spasms shut.

When he turns his head, there’s a woman with the same eyes as Taako sitting on the edge of the metal gurney across from him. Lup is wearing a thin paper gown, frost in the ends of her hair, and she’s curled tightly against Magnus; the water dripping off their thawing faces is making a translucent spot on the chest of his matching gown. They’re both looking at Kravitz with wide eyes, arms wrapped around each other.

Where’s Taako? 

As they fall through ash of the darkness coming apart around them, he feels Taako’s hand in his, and when he looks up the dark is snowing into Taako’s open mouth and he spits it out, eyes bright as he looks at Kravitz, tightening his grip. They’re crashing down together and he feels Taako’s body hardening back into real curves on top of his, can taste the dark on Taako’s mouth, a smoky and uncanny dirt he licks clean from his bottom lip— 

Where’s Taako? There’s not enough air in his chest to speak, so he just pushes out a painful, questioning noise, looking desperately at Barry as he throws a hand out into the empty space beside him.

When Kravitz comes to again in darkness, he feels a gentle kiss against his neck and a hand on his chest. His mind clings to those points of touch as he begins to panic that he’s back at the beginning. Taako, he thinks with a high whine of fear, I have to find him _—_ and  he feels the hand press down more firmly. 

“You found me, my dude. I’m right here.”

He turns his head towards the warmth on his neck and Taako is there beside him, in their bed, in his room, eyes soft. He reaches out a slow hand to pull him closer, and he can smell the last notes of Taako’s perfume, flowers fading against the warmth of his skin. 

As Kravitz looks out the massive window behind him, he sees only stars, the desert floor invisible in the darkness, and the disorientation is calming, right now—as if they’ve somehow outrun the world to a quiet corner of the universe. Taako catches his hand, kissing his fingertip.

“Welcome to the club,” he says, letting out a shaky sigh. “That was real dumb, Krav. How do you feel?”

“Ok.” Kravitz takes a deep breath; his chest still aches, but his head is clear. Taako sucks the tip of his middle finger into his mouth, running his tongue gently against the dull edge of Kravitz’s nail. “Mm. Good, now,” Kravitz says with a weak laugh.

“I bet I can make you feel better. Is that ok?”

Kravitz nods, and as Taako straddles him and begins to move small kisses with faint flickers of tongue down his chest, he focuses on the uneven heat of his breath and shift of legs against his own, small accidents of life the planes don’t bother to imitate. As Taako slowly takes him into his mouth, with each inch he wakes all the way back into his body, forgotten corners of himself coming alight as he tangles a hand in Taako’s hair.

 

It lasts for the first few days, this honeymoon with their reclaimed selves, shivering at every simple fact as they push against familiar limits. It’s a raw deal for dying, but a hell of a lot of fun. Taako savors the way he and Kravitz press each other into the wall every time they turn a private corner, lips softer and teeth sharper, sensation making everything else in his head lose focus.

And if Magnus seems to touch him more than he did before, that must just be part of it too, this high. It’s so slightly different, anyway—a touch on his back maybe closer to his hips than his shoulders—that Taako decides he must be imagining it as they all start to come down from the adrenaline.

 

When Lup group-texts _pool party_ with an amount of emojis Kravitz calls _excessive_ , Taako responds in seconds: _think Lucretia’s got curly straws somewhere in this joint?_ Two weeks in without the pressure of the work, days at Balance seem too long; they’ve all started sleeping in more than they should, skipping meals. Lup is usually the first to come up with an excuse to get together when someone retreats too far.

Magnus is on the fence—the stillness of this place is making him itch—but then Taako brushes past him in the hallway with a wink and a joke about a tight swimsuit, and Magnus tells himself he was already planning to hang out with Lup today, even though this is exactly the kind of situation he’s been trying to avoid.

When Taako appeared out of the blankness of the afterlife and threw his arms around him, Magnus had been sure that they both remembered the same thing. Taako did deserve so much more than Wonderland—from _him_ —and thought he deserved so little. How could they have forgotten? 

But Taako shrugged, and when they came back to Balance, he didn’t remember—or it didn’t matter to him. Either way, Magnus noticed every lopsided smile Taako gave as Kravitz ran a fond thumb over the flash of skin beneath his shirt, the way he shivered when Kravitz whispered a private joke into his ear. Taako was happy—that was what Magnus wanted. Taako could also curl Magnus around his finger with a single tilt of his head, and Magnus wanted that, too. It’s not like he hadn’t noticed it over the last few years, but it had been easier to push aside to protect the friendship that meant so much to both of them. It seemed to carry more weight, now, reinforced by something that came before.

But Magnus hadn’t remembered everything, after all. They’re still reclaiming the past, piece by piece, with each other’s help; they can’t find what they don’t know is there, so they prompt each other whenever they think of something, no matter how small. But while Magnus silently tries to flesh out his new certainty with details, Taako doesn’t give him any reminders. It’s Taako’s memory to patch as he likes; he’s earned the right to whatever present he wants. So no matter how often they go over the rest, Magnus steers clear of anything they might have done alone.

When Taako looks over his shoulder in the dark hallway—“Coming, Mags?”—Magnus follows him without question. Out on the patio, it almost feels like spring, the sky pale blue and the faint smell of new plants carried over the dry ground. Even Kravitz has rolled the cuffs of his pants to his calves and dipped his feet in the water as he as he nods at Lup. Kravitz has been eager to help catch her up on the past few years, and Taako elbows in, only to crash a lively recap of Brexit. 

“Brangelina _,”_ Taako interrupts with an eye-roll. “I’m not letting you turn my sister into a huge nerd, Krav.” 

Magnus laughs. “She asked me about that one already.” 

“RIP,” Lup says with a straight face. “One big L for love, but a W for Lup. I know I made a bet with someone about that. Your old roommate, Magnus? Greg something—?”

A sudden breeze carries the chill of the water over them, blowing a curl into Taako’s eyes, and Magnus reaches out a warm hand to tuck it back.

 

As Magnus’s thumb traces along the edge of his ear, trailing just an inch down his neck, Taako notices Kravitz’s eyes follow his fingers. It’s a question too subtle for anyone but Taako to notice, and Kravitz doesn’t seem bothered, so Taako doesn’t lean away—until Magnus jerks back his hand, eyes snapping into focus like he just realized he left a candle burning in another room.

Taako’s stomach does a strange flip, and he slides away, nudging Lup with his shoulder. “Remember when we’d hop the fence into that pool because we were too broke to pay?” Lup nods. “Didn’t Barry get the invite this time?” 

She laughs, but her eyes dart away as she absentmindedly kicks her foot, watching the water curve around it.

Magnus clears his throat in the silence. “Hey, Kravitz, I almost forgot—I found that, uh, book you wanted to borrow.” 

Kravitz shoots him a confused look, until he notices Taako staring intently at Lup. “Oh, yeah. Hey, we’re going to go grab that—book, that I need, right now.” 

Taako rolls his eyes as they walk away, and when Kravitz thinks they’re out of earshot he elbows Magnus. “‘I found that book you want?’ How obvious can you be?” 

“What, you like to read!” 

Kravitz starts laughing as Magnus gives him a teasing shrug. “Is that the only thing you know about me? Well, I also like classical music, if that comes in handy for any future distractions.” 

Taako hides a smile before turning to Lup, who’s still staring down at the water. “Why are you avoiding Barry? He’s been wearing his nicest jeans for you.”

It’s almost painful, watching him stare at her across the cafeteria and look away when she notices. Taako finally followed him back to his lab yesterday, spinning a chair around to rest his elbows on the front. _“Why are you being weird with my sister?” “What?” “Have you even talked to her yet?”_ Barry shrugged. _“Just being able to be in a room and hear her laugh—it’s enough, Taako.”_ Immediately, Taako dropped his head onto his crossed arms. _“GOD BARRY. GROSS.”_

Lup cocks her head at him. “Right, so we can double-date? You bored of Kravitz already?” 

“Oh, _definitely_ not,” Taako smirks, and she kicks water on him. “Fuck you!” he yells, mock-offended. “This look is for poolside, not the pool, you feel me?”

As she laughs, Taako scoots closer, leaning his head on her shoulder. “Seriously, Lup. What’s up?”

“I mean—for me it feels like, yesterday I was making fun of him for wearing a collared shirt to a party. But it’s been years.” 

“Come on, Lup, I made a joke about Tinder and he didn’t know what it was. Please go on a date with him so I don’t have to go back to the afterlife and save him when he dies of horniness.”

Lup chuckles, but it’s clear there’s something more. Taako waits, kicking his feet gently in the water beside hers.

“It’s just—he put you through so much, Taako. And I know he was trying to protect you, but—“ She pauses, and then continues more quietly. “He should have gotten you out.” 

Taako starts, pulling away to look at her fiercely. “Don’t even—you can’t say that. I’m here, you’re here, remember?”

Lup flinches at their childhood promise and shoves her face into her hands, pushing her thumbs roughly into the corners of her eyes. “All of you—if I hadn’t fucked up, if you hadn’t spent all this time trying to save me, none of this would have happened.”

Taako pulls her close, stroking her hair, and he feels her strangle a few sobs into hiccups. “Hey, hey, it’s not your fault. And I would do it all over again to get you back—I just wish I had known who I was fighting for.” Fucking cheesy, and he means every bit of it. Kravitz must be rubbing off on him.

“Thanks, Taako,” she whispers, wrapping her arms around him. After a moment, she gives him a tight squeeze and then pulls away, knocking him with an elbow. “What about you? Why are you being weird with Magnus?”

“I’m not,” he says unconvincingly, shoulders tightening. Every time he pulls on one memory, lately, more come tumbling out after it, not always logical and not always good—so he’s started avoiding entire areas of thought, like this, that might reveal something unwelcome. What if the way he feels now when Magnus touches him means that Magnus rejected him _twice_?

Lup looks him over carefully, and then shrugs. “I guess I just remembered you guys being _closer_ , somehow. But maybe I’m wrong. Shit’s still fucked up in the dome, ya know.”

 

Later that night, Lup winks at Taako over dinner and walks over to Barry’s empty table. As she sits across from him, he turns bright red; Taako snorts loudly enough for Barry to hear, which makes him redder—and then Taako studiously, mercifully ignores the two of them for the rest of the meal. Soon Taako can usually find her curled in his lap, or flipping through the textbooks in his lab. Half of the chemistry ones are hers; Barry put careful tape over her signature. _Just like that time you_ , Taako starts as she steals Barry’s glasses over breakfast, and she shakes her head. “Better.”

They’re the first to move out, a couple weeks later, headed back to Barry’s small apartment for now. Lup has already started applying to grad schools, with a stellar recommendation from Lucretia. 

As they pack up the last of the lab into cardboard boxes in Barry’s car, she hugs Taako tightly, pulling away to give him a worried look. “Come over anytime, ok? I mean it. Let’s have dinner, tomorrow. Promise?”

Taako promises, but when the time comes nerves hum in his stomach; after half an hour of trying to force himself out the door, he runs a hot shower instead.

 

Magnus is the next to leave, pulling Taako and Kravitz into a tight hug and muttering something about paying Ben overtime.

 

Taako doesn’t have a good reason for why he keeps sleeping in his room, pointedly ignoring Lucretia as they sit at different tables over meals in the dining hall. Lucretia had started to box up a few things, but she doesn’t push Taako to leave—in fact, they don’t speak at all—and the longer he stays he notices she stops packing, and starts changing the dining hall menu slightly to suit his preferences (less pasta, more seasonal vegetables). 

Kravitz stays for a while, but eventually he starts spending some nights in his motel room in town, driving back early in the morning with two paper cups of coffee from Merlegaritaville (on the house) because Taako is _getting too used to the dishwater they serve here_ , his words, wrinkling his nose at the lukewarm cup Taako poured from the dining hall carafe yet again one morning.

 

“I want to take you out to dinner,” Kravitz said, knocking on the door to Taako’s room in his nicest suit, and he even brought flowers—Taako hates roses, he knows that, so he brought a few dark purple tulips, the glossy petals complementing his pressed suit and Taako’s strappy black dress. This is good, Taako tells himself, this is what a good person does, the person I love, but the thought can’t quiet the nerves that spark in his stomach as soon as Kravitz leads him past the concrete patio, into the fine white dust that settles on his toes and beneath the straps of his sandals.

He’s quiet in the car, and eventually asks if they can go back to Kravitz’ room instead. Kravitz nods, hiding his concern as best he can—which is probably well enough to fool most people, but not Taako. Back in his room, Taako throws his shoes in the corner and crawls onto the bed, reaching for the TV remote. Kravitz loosens his collar, unbuttoning the top buttons of his shirt, and slides in next to him, hesitating for a moment before wrapping an arm around him. They sit silently like that for a while, backs against the headboard, Taako half-watching the evening news as Kravitz steals glances at him. Finally, Kravitz pulls out his phone and starts looking for take-out places. 

“What are you in the mood for, Taako?” It’s the kind of innocent-enough-but-possibly-more question that would usually make Taako fire a comeback or a come-on at him, but he just feels exhausted. He shrugs, watching a replay of a high-speed chase on the TV in front of them.

All Taako wants is to be back in his room at Balance, but Kravitz insisted. He’s been doing that a lot, lately—gently suggesting they go for a walk, get some real food, be around people, maybe Taako should stay the night in his room here instead … and so Taako’s here, isn’t he. He stretches his foot out to catch the last of the sunset filtering through the accordion blinds, pulling it back distastefully once it touches the worn floral comforter. He misses the slow way the concrete underfoot at Balance absorbs the night chill, the familiar mess of his sheets. 

Kravitz looks like he’s finally about to say something when his phone rings. Taako glances at it—Corva. He’s seen Kravitz ignore this call before, but this time he looks at Taako and says, “I need to take this.” Once he answers, he taps the screen to put her on speaker and rests the phone on his leg. That’s another thing he’s started doing, lately—making a point of having conversations about Taako in front of Taako.

“What the fuck, Kravitz?” Corva starts sharply, and Kravitz winces. It’s a strong opener, Taako will give her that.

“I know.”

“No, you don’t know, obviously, or we would have been having this conversation weeks ago. Thanks for the texts, I guess; you don’t know how close I’ve been to calling the police, except that would require me figuring out the coordinates of the desert hovel where you’ve apparently decided to go off the grid.” She takes a deep breath, and Kravitz knows this tone. She’s angry, sure, but she’s worried about him.

“What about Taako? That’s the guy you were interviewing, right? The undead guy?” Kravitz looks over at Taako. “Yeah, he’s ok, too.” He doesn’t believe that, Taako thinks bitterly. “Uh, Corva, there’s something I should tell you. Taako and I, we’ve—become romantically involved.”

There’s a pause, and Corva exhales slowly.

“Fuck, Kravitz. I’m glad you’re not dead, but being in love might be worse? What about the piece?”

Kravitz looks over at Taako again, who gives him nothing. Kravitz shakes his head.

“I don’t know, Corva. No—you know what, I do know. I’m not doing that anymore.” Taako, even right now, can recognize a romantic gesture when he sees one, and he squeezes Kravitz’ hand on the comforter between them.

She sighs. “Look, Kravitz, disappearing is one thing, but trying to kill a story because of who you’re sleeping with is something else.” Kravitz winces, opens his mouth—it’s not like that—but one of the things he respects most about Corva is that she’s committed to integrity as if it were a natural law of the universe. Taako notices his pained look, and he was obviously moving to withdraw his hand from Kravitz’s, but he leaves it. 

“I know.”

She sighs again. “Good. Then you know why I’m firing you. But I think you also know that I’ve known you a long time, and I want the best for you, always. So, will you at least walk me through what happened?”

Kravitz hesitates, looking at Taako; to his surprise, he nods. So, a little shakily, he starts to talk. It’s the first time he’s said any of it out loud, outside the bubble of the people involved. It sounds as impossible to her as it did to Kravitz the first time he met Taako, but gradually he tells her the whole story of these people, this family, who live and die unlike anyone else. As Kravitz walks through his own death, eyes a little glazed—I couldn’t let him go so I did what I had to do, I don’t know how, and it all went dark—Taako pulls his knees to his chest, pressing them hard to unknot the guilt collecting there.

Corva is silent for a long time. “I’m glad you’re alive, Kravitz. Both of you.” She pauses. “And also, this is a hell of a story. You should take some time to recover, and think, and when you’re ready, I can set up some meetings if you want them.”

As Kravitz hangs up, running a tired hand over his face, Taako is still, arms tightening around himself. This is good—it’s good Kravitz got to talk to someone, even if it was strange to hear everything said out loud—so he doesn’t know why he’s so upset. A book deal? Taako’s not opposed to making a buck—he had a good thing going with sponsored posts on an aspirational lifestyle Instagram Lucretia politely asked him to shut down—but hearing Corva talk about his fucked-up family like they’re a roadside attraction is … too much. 

“Uh, Kravitz, can’t argue that everyone deserves to know how awesome Taako is, but I’m not sure I’m ready for a world-wide audience?” 

Kravitz sighs. “I know. That’s fine. I’m not going to write about you if you don’t want it. Just tell me what you want.” And he’s saying it in the same patient tone as always, but there’s a growing edge behind the words. “That’s all you have to do, Taako, is just tell me what you want.” Taako grabs the question like a knife and closes his hand.

“What? What don’t I tell you, Kravitz? You apparently know enough about me to write a goddamn novel.”

Kravitz flinches, and then, in a rush—“Taako, you never told me what happened in Wonderland. Merle did, because he thought I should know, and you know what, I was kind of glad someone thought that.”

“Why? So you could fight Magnus for my heart?”

_“No_ ,” Kravitz says, genuinely hurt. “I’ve never been jealous, if that’s what you were worried about? Were you?” He waits, but Taako stubbornly doesn’t answer—even as he admits to himself that he knew it, but it’s good to hear—and Kravitz sighs again. “Whatever you felt, or feel, about Magnus doesn’t change how I feel about you. I just want to talk about it.” He pauses again, hopefully, but Taako continues to give him a narrow-eyed, silent look, curling his toes into the comforter. Finally, Kravitz loses his composure for a minute. “That’s not a lot to ask, Taako. Do you have feelings for your closest friend who you just remembered you shared a whole other life with? When are you leaving Balance? What do you want to do next? Do you want me to stay here? Please just pick _one_ , and give me some kind of answer?”

Each one winds Taako up tighter. Behind them, the TV plays a weekly forecast into the silence. Sun, sun, and more sun, it’s the fucking desert, Taako snaps in his head. “I’m not answering a single question on your survey, Kravitz. So what does _that_ tell you?”

Kravitz gets up to sit down heavily in the desk chair next to the bed. 

“Fine. The one that matters is, do you want me to stay?” 

As Kravitz looks at him, shaken out of the rhythm of the argument and considering him, Taako holds his legs tighter to his chest and stares, daring him to take the out. Taako would, right? It’s been years since he’s given anyone more than a few nights: _I’d probably be dead to you in a few weeks, anyway._ There are so many blanks behind him, and a new blankness ahead of him, too, now that death is off the table.

“Go if you want,” Taako spits somewhere from the basement of his brain, the rest full of static like a house fire.

 

As they pull away from the motel, a rare rain shower scatters across the windshield, and Kravitz switches on his wipers as he asks quietly, “Where do you want me to take you?”

“Home,” Taako mutters, pushing his cheek against the cold window. 

“Your place?” 

Taako shakes his head, and Kravitz blows out a long sigh. “Taako, I’m not taking you back to wander around that empty bunker with Lucretia anymore.”

When they open the door to Magnus’ house, Taako pushes past both of them and heads straight for his room. Technically, it’s a guest room, but it’s his toothbrush on the sink and his spare clothes in the cedar-lined closet. He doesn’t look back, but he can feel Kravitz and Magnus staring as he slams the door.

 

Magnus might not always admit it, but he built his home to make time gentler for his friends, all soft corners to curl up in and their favorite distractions—a kitchen with a full spice rack and fresh produce for Taako, tricky houseplants for Merle. As Kravitz leans heavily against the counter, Magnus slips a fresh cup of coffee into his hand. He notices Kravitz’s unironed shirt, sleeves rolled up without the usual tight creases, and gives him a sympathetic look.

“Want me to spike that? I’ve probably got vodka somewhere.” Kravitz lets out a weak laugh. “I’m sorry, Kravitz. This is all—a lot to deal with.” 

“I know. But—I mean, look at you. You seem like you’re doing so much better with everything.”

Magnus is good, most days, but he has moments where his soul comes a little unstuck. Over dinner one night, Barry compared healing him to screwing a warped lid back on a jar, a metaphor Taako called “ _rude”_ but which Magnus appreciated. And so, some moments, he just—flickers out for a few seconds. The first time, he came to and Taako had a hand over his own mouth—they were talking on the Balance patio and suddenly he was facing a body instead of a person, Magnus blank as a mannequin. _Like you were dead, again,_ Taako said, jumping forward to hold him for longer than he had in a while and rub a slow circle over his back. Anyway, having Taako around helps, is the point, which is ironic, considering that the most disorienting thing to Magnus lately is also Taako.

Magnus shakes his head, not meeting Kravitz’s eyes. “Yeah, mostly. But some things are harder than others.” He pauses, and then continues, throat a little tight. “Like when you’re not sure if some things were real, or maybe just something you’re imagining.”

Kravitz tilts his head; there’s a charge in the air, and Magnus realizes too late that Kravitz understands exactly what he means. Magnus starts to scratch a nervous fingernail against the edge of the granite countertop, and Kravitz lets out a deep breath. 

“Magnus, you should know that—I just want him to be happy.”

Kravitz leaves a long silence open like a door. 

Magnus takes a deep breath, and then—“Kravitz, I think we were _together_ , before,” he admits in a rush. “I thought maybe it was just me, but—I feel like I loved him, and he loved me too. It’s the only way I can explain some things.” He leans against the sink behind him, and as his back hits its cold rim, he gets a flash—a touch on his stomach and a graze against his spit-slick lip—and as he grabs for it it’s gone. “But I don’t know if I can trust what I feel,” he finishes quietly. 

All at once, Magnus feels the politeness he’s used to from Kravitz, his friend’s boyfriend, replaced by a new closeness between two people who both care, very much, about the same person.

Kravitz sighs, pushing up from the counter and turning around to face Magnus. “I know. But this isn’t like the other things you’re remembering. The only thing that makes it real, or not, is whether you both feel it.”

“That’s kind of the terrifying part,” Magnus says, looking up to meet Kravitz’s eyes for the first time. “I’m sorry, I don’t want to mess anything up between you guys. I shouldn’t be talking about this with you—”

“No, I’m glad you did,” Kravitz says, shaking his head. “As long as you talk to him about it, too.” He hesitates. “Hey, Magnus—I’m really glad you’re in his life. Mine, too.”

When Kravitz leans forward, Magnus startles for a moment as Kravitz pulls him into a hug. It’s a little awkward, still; the last time they hugged was the first time they met, in his woodshop, Magnus realizes. Kravitz is surprisingly cold, shirt still damp from the rain, and Magnus pulls him in tighter, wrapping his arms around his shoulders.

A bark and a small curse drift in from the dark hallway as Taako trips against one of the dogs on his way to the bathroom. Magnus raises an eyebrow, head turning towards the commotion, and Kravitz leans back to grab his keys with a tired sigh. “If he asks, just let him know I’m at the motel?” Magnus nods, patting him on the back as they start walking towards the door. 

“Hey—thanks for the coffee.”

Magnus shoots him a grin. “Anytime. Coffee, black; classical music. I’m learning.” 

 

When Taako shuffles into the kitchen after midnight to find Magnus still, staring down at the cup of tea in his hands, his stomach tightens. They had been so sure the blank-outs were over. As he recognizes the shirt—Magnus’s favorite, the one Taako imagined him wearing in the afterlife—his head feels a little light, too. Quickly, he walks over and squeezes Magnus’s shoulder.

“Hey, Mags. You with me?”

Magnus looks up, and his eyes are clear.

“Yeah, I’m here, Taako. Sorry.” He pauses, tapping the blunt edge of his nail against his mug, and it makes a small bell-like sound that hits strangely in Taako’s stomach. “I was just thinking. You didn’t tell me what you and Kravitz fought about?”

Taako’s shoulders rise a bit. “Doesn’t matter what, my dude. You saw him walk out the door.”

Magnus winces. Taako’s Rejection Issues—he knows Magnus takes credit for some of that. “Come on. You guys were good, last time I saw you. Great.” His cheeks redden, and Taako looks at him curiously.

“Yeah, we were good. Maybe not good enough.” 

Magnus gives him the patient look he’s perfected over years of trying to pin Taako into talking about his feelings. 

“Fine,” Taako exhales, stealing Magnus’s tea. Chamomile, cooled off just enough. “Maybe I was—maybe it was a lot to deal with, for me, after the whole fuck-yeah-we’re-not-dead thing wore off.” He thinks of the day he didn’t leave his bed at Balance, too dizzy, convinced somehow that if he stepped a foot on the floor he would come unstuck from the world. How Kravitz stayed, eventually picking up the only thing in the room to read—a years-old regional lifestyle magazine—and gently made fun of tourism ads until Taako laughed, a little, in between fast breaths. “Maybe I didn’t handle it that well.” He remembers how tired Kravitz looked at the motel, leaning against the wall of a room that wasn’t home, no matter how long he stayed. _Just tell me what you want, Taako_. Then, more quietly: “You know how Taako takes out the good guys.”

Magnus nods. “What did he say, exactly?”

“Basically, that I needed to figure some shit out.”

Magnus is quiet, for a while, and then he tentatively reaches out a hand for Taako’s across the counter. Something in how carefully his fingertips, warm from the heat of his mug, slip up the inside of Taako’s fingers and over the hollows between his knuckles makes him look up silently to meet Magnus’ eyes. 

“Taako—am I something you need to figure out?”

Taako swallows roughly. “Burnsides, I thought you had me all figured out already.” 

A shadow passes over Magnus’ face, and he pulls his hand away. It’s not unkind, but it’s enough to reorient the slight shift in the air between them back to the usual. He upends his mug in the sink, pushing up his sleeves of his shirt. The elbow’s starting to rub thin, Taako notices. He should really get him a new one. Better colors, this time, maybe blue to set off his eyes.

Magnus turns around with a serious look. “Kravitz didn’t reject you, Taako. He put the ball in your court. That’s different.”

 

As midnight passes with the IPRE gone, Lucretia empties her office, except for one last cardboard box on her desk. She fills it with what she thinks will be required to convince Kravitz, and then writes his name on top in neat letters. This new offer she’s gotten is promising—good money, modern equipment, eager assistants—and she wants his help when the time comes. Upstairs, every bed is made neatly, and the windows scrubbed so clean that they seem invisible again. She walks across the concrete patio one final time, white robe trailing behind her, to meet the black car that skids to a stop in the dirt, damp from a rare spring rain.

“One stop first,” she says, settling the box carefully into the seat beside her, and the driver nods. “A motel on the edge of town. I need to pay a visit to a friend.”

 

Kravitz calls twice the next morning, and Taako sends him to voicemail. Number one at ghosting, right here—got the research papers to prove it, he thinks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 9/10: time for some Important Conversations between people who are not always great at talking to each other. I decided to close out with two longer chapters instead of breaking things up too much, so this one’s pretty dialogue-heavy, and I’m excited to play with structure a little bit in the next chapter.
> 
> I’ve really appreciated all your comments over the last few chapters, even if I haven’t always responded. I’m on tumblr for writing stuff now at alevelone, and asks are open if you’re interested.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Taako discovers the past, and decides what he wants from the future. Lucretia gets a promotion.
> 
> This chapter hits the Mature rating while also resolving some plot, so please check the updated tags.

_Meet us at the café on campus_ , Taako texts as Kravitz steps off the plane, single suitcase slung over his shoulder. It throws Kravitz until he remembers where Lucretia works, now—a tech company that puts a collegiate spin on immersive expectations, with pockets deep enough to hide the occasional long shot.

When he pushes through the door, the noise of trays sliding over chrome counters echoing around him, he hesitates for just a second. Taako is snuggled under Magnus’ arm; as Magnus whispers behind his hand, eyes following four people in identical hoodies, Taako laughs and tilts his head up to press a kiss under Magnus’s jaw. Then Magnus sees Kravitz, waves broadly, and Taako grins, checking Kravitz out as obviously as possible. Kravitz is on Lucretia’s turf again, so he dressed up. He’s wearing one of his best suits, in matching black down to his shoes.

“Hey, grim reaper,” Taako smirks as he sits down, and then gives him an easy kiss, running his fingers over the tailored lapel of Kravitz’s jacket. “For real, though, I like the suit. You look sharp, Krav.”

Magnus gives him a friendly nod over Taako’s head, but there’s a quirk to his smile that acknowledges the last time they were all together.

Taako waves a hand at the tall windows surrounding them. “Ok, we can all agree Lucretia’s definitely got an aesthetic, right? This place is some stone-cold modern shit, but the food is top-notch.” He pokes appreciatively at the salad in front of him: vegetables lightly dressed and sliced thin as paper. “I should send the menu to Merle. Give him some ideas.”

Outside, it’s an even 70 degrees, the sky cloudless and the grass hyper-green. The sidewalk is a bit too even, the buildings dark cubes of tempered glass, and by the time the three of them reach the address Lucretia gave them they're quiet with unease. Magnus tests a hand against the door as Kravitz swipes his guest pass over the sensor.

Lucretia’s new lab is nothing like Barry’s basement set-up, with its microscopes held together by surgical tape. Organized sets of glassware sparkle sun over the walls, and her new assistants wear black lab coats embroidered with the company logo. As they rush to form a makeshift corridor, red, blue, and green letters flash opalescent in the wall of dark fabric. 

Taako searches their faces, but their eyes are bright and their skin flushed as they watch the three pass, whispering among each other. Under the pressure of their gaze, Kravitz stands up straighter, pushing his hands into his pockets, and Magnus moves a little closer to Taako.

Lucretia is waiting at the far end of the room.  With a polite nod, she waves them into her office and closes the door, gesturing at three chrome and leather chairs arranged in front of a glass-topped desk. Kravitz takes the center, his eyes locked on Lucretia's. Beside him, Taako perches at the edge of his seat, back perfectly straight, and reaches between the chairs for Kravitz’s hand.

 

After Taako died for the first time, he couldn’t fall asleep again until Lup set a bottle of NyQuil beside his tea five days later. When Kravitz opens the door to his room the morning after their fight wearing the same wrinkled shirt, Taako tastes it again—earl grey barely masking the blue syrup he poured in like honey. Kravitz is always awake when Taako wakes up, now; he realizes that he doesn’t know the last time Kravitz slept through a night.

Taako’s eyes dart over to the table: a cup of the coffee from the lobby Kravitz swore he’d never touch, and a cardboard box with Kravitz’s name in familiar handwriting on the top. Taako slinks just beyond the doorway.

“—the _fuck_ is that?”

“A parting gift.”

Kravitz gets half an explanation out, of the wrong details—a black car idling across three parking spaces, Lucretia stepping around each spent cigarette butt on the concrete—and Taako doesn’t understand. The fight-or-flight prickle under his skin is fading; Kravitz is bad off in a way he remembers.

“I’m sorry. That I wasn’t here.”

Kravitz slumps back against the wall behind the table, shaking his head and narrowly missing a faux-gold sconce. “This doesn’t change anything, Taako. I still need to know—if we met in the real world, instead of me embedding with a semi-death-cult and saving your life?“—his voice pitches up with a shaky laugh—“would we be together?” Kravitz can’t stop glancing at the box, sealed with Lucretia’s neat signature. “I mean, I said I—and you didn’t even—“

Taako crosses the room and puts a hand on Kravitz’s cheek, pulling his eyes away. “Tell me about your apartment.”

Kravitz blinks, leaning into his hand. “What?”

“It'll help. I promise,” Taako says quietly. Imagine a place you feel good—that’s what he used to do when he woke up sweating, alone in his small house. Short on memories, it was always the same day in Magnus’s shop, sun on his back as Magnus notched the outline of a feather into scrap wood, his knife releasing the sharp smell of sap. “Give me the Cribs tour of your place, Krav.”

“Um—it’s tiny,” Kravitz says hesitantly.

“I’m going to need more than  _that_.” Taako runs his thumb over Kravitz’s jaw, slowly enough to settle the warmth in his skin. “Don’t people pay you to describe things? Break me off a piece. I want to hear about every one of your favorite period architectural details—and that is a one-time offer.”

Kravitz smiles a little and starts to talk through his building—“marble threshold, original”—closing his eyes to block out the faux-wood panelling around them. Slowly, his pulse calms with the repetition. Taako confesses to a deep interest in the midcentury furniture he found on Craigslist—“Really?” “No, you adorable nerd”—and when Kravitz laughs, Taako moves his hand lower, slipping his fingertips beneath the open buttons of Kravitz’s shirt.

“Can’t wait to see it for real.” Then, he leans in again, voice lowering. “You didn’t tell me about your bed.”

Kravitz’s eyes are still closed. “Mm. Nothing special.”

“That can’t be true if you’re up in it, my dude,” Taako smirks, and as Kravitz chuckles, he can picture it: all-white sheets, made every morning with tight corners like a hotel.  “Have you thought about me in your bed?”

Taako is close, now, palms pressed to the wall, and he settles his weight slowly against Kravitz, moving his lips closer with each bit of tension he gives up. Kravitz pushes forward into a messy kiss before falling back, a little flustered. Taako’s voice is soft, but he can’t resist.

“Kravitz, I want to hear exactly how you imagined me fucking up your perfect sheets.”

Kravitz’s laugh fades into a low noise as Taako kisses up the quickening pulse in his neck. He loves how Kravitz likes being played like a violin, loves plucking one string at a time to set their pace, loves—

Kravitz’s eyes are still closed as Taako presses his lips to the thin skin below his ear, and Kravitz turns to touch his cheek to Taako’s, breathing, “Taako, I lo—“

He catches himself. Taako leans back, putting his hand on Kravitz’s chest as Kravitz opens his eyes. 

When Taako almost died for the last time, coughing out darkness that ran sticky down his chin, fingers pushed through the black tar and then Kravitz was a careful magnet dragging him up to fill his body again.

As they stare at each other, Kravitz runs his fingertips an inch below the waist of Taako’s skirt, and Taako recognizes the tug in his hips. 

He whispers it, a little hoarse: “I love you, too.”

They’re both still, and a charge builds in the space between them. Then Kravitz drags a fingernail against his stomach, and Taako shivers—and Kravitz lunges forward, pressing up against Taako and into his mouth. As his hands dig into Taako’s hips through the thin fabric of his skirt and his tongue slips against Taako’s, Taako moans.

Kravitz is loose against him, their kiss slow, and he feels so open—

—and also, Taako realizes, exhausted.

He pulls away gently, burning the moment out into a pleasant warmth, and Kravitz gives him a broad smile before falling back against the wall. 

One arm still wrapped around Taako's waist, Kravitz moves to grab his coffee from the nearby table.  Taako steals the cup away, taking a curious sip and shaking his head, the memory of cough syrup on his tongue. “Mm-mm. You need to sleep, my dude. That box isn't gonna grow legs and walk away." 

When Kravitz wakes up after a few hours of good sleep, showers, and puts on fresh clothes, the box does seem smaller—especially with Taako’s arms around him. Then, he lifts off the lid. Taako’s breath gets faster against the back of his neck, and Kravitz breaks the silence. “We need to call Magnus.”

 

Settling behind her desk, Lucretia rests her hands on either side of her closed laptop. The expanse of glass between her and the three of them is wiped clean of all fingerprints, empty except for a mug with the company logo—a bright sans serif, all edges blunted.

“So many of the things we let control our lives are accidents of biology, nothing more. You three, of all people, see that, right?” she begins, looking at them expectantly. “We’ve seen the limits of our world better than anyone else, and there’s no reason we should accept them. Death is just one of those accidents. There is no reason the hunger of the planes should devour at will.”

“Save it for your TED talk, Lucretia. We don’t travel anymore,” Taako says, a well-hidden tremble in his voice. Behind her, the windows frame a sky with no ground, pale gold in the late afternoon.

“Oh, no-one does. The losses you suffered were intolerable mistakes that no-one else should have to face. That’s exactly the point of my new work: bodies are fallible, and dangerous. Because of what you’ve done, we can be free of them.”

 

As Taako tips up the box to dump it on Magnus’s counter, Kravitz stops him, trying to keep the timeline intact. Each folder holds page after page of annotated deaths, supplemented by Lucretia’s official journal torn up and slotted in order between the relevant charts. They change color halfway through: white is before, blue is Balance.  

Lucretia has given back as much of the past as she can.

Kravitz reaches for one of the first white folders, and Magnus reaches for one of the last. Taako hesitates, and yanks at the middle to pull out a random few.

Together, they start laying charts out on the counter, mixing together the broken graphs of Taako and Magnus’s heartbeats.

There’s a spare rhythm to the first notes, rendering human lives like a train schedule: 8:15 subject A departs, 8:17 subject A awakens. As they keep reading, small details carefully anonymized begin to complicate the rhythm, and the way Lucretia’s affection grows as the end gets closer gives Kravitz goosebumps. 

_Subjects A & B are punctually late, as usual, arriving 15 minutes past, on the dot. Subject B requests the scientific explanation for a “wicked hangover”, and Researcher administers a stern lecture as well as IV fluids._

“I’m Subject A, natch,” Taako says. “Lup is B. That party was _nasty_. Remember, Magnus? Warehouse, light-up floor, but only half of it worked?”

Magnus doesn’t answer. He’s holding the last of the old notes, before Balance: _Subject A & Subject C arrive together. Both appear distracted, but happy._

“I’m Subject C,” he says, and as he looks up at Taako his voice breaks.

Taako and Magnus’s first real date was on the last hot day before fall, Magnus remembers in a flash—the night before Lucretia wiped them. The first tip-off had been that Taako invited himself over to Magnus’s apartment to study for a chemistry test. By now, they had earned enough "extra credit" through the work for Lucretia to give them all A’s. _“Sure,”_ Magnus said, a little too excited. _“Uh. Should we invite Lup?”_ _“Nah, she’s busy,”_ Taako answered, a little too casual. Magnus knew for a fact Lup was lying on the couch in their apartment, right now, bored out of her mind (her words, via text). _“Yeah, ok,”_ Magnus responded, equally casual. It was the latest excuse one of them made to spend time alone—always something innocuous, like a late lunch or a lab assignment, but Taako had a way of making him excited about the simplest things.

Taako showed up with a bag of groceries slung over his shoulder; Magnus made a show of looking for a textbook as he let him in. _“Thought you wanted to study?”_

Taako just waved his hand and winked as he walked to drop the bag on Magnus’ narrow kitchen counter. “ _If it’s really chemistry Lucretia’s testing, of course we’ll get an A. Thought I’d make dinner instead.”_

Magnus was glad Taako was already too busy looking through his empty cabinets to see him blush. 

_“This is grim, Burnsides. You don’t even have two matching plates?”_ Taako called over his shoulder. 

_“You’re lucky I have plates at all,”_ Magnus said, walking over to help load the vegetables Taako brought into his fridge. 

_“You really know how to make a guy feel at home,”_ Taako said with a playful shove, and his hand lingered just a moment too long at Magnus’s hip.

Magnus knew Taako cooked, but he hadn’t realized he was so good at it. He moved on instinct, pulling vegetables off the fire at exactly the right moment to keep them crisp to the bite but tender inside, while never losing sight of the simmering water and sauce he had cooking down on the stove. Magnus watched every step intently, and as Taako turned around to wipe his forehead, he smirked as he caught Magnus staring. _“Hey, Mags, it’s fucking hot in here—and I’d love to give myself all the credit, but mind opening a window while I finish this up?”_

Magnus started, guilty, and headed for the old wood-framed kitchen window. Layers of paint from past landlords made it stick, and he had to lean into it to push it far enough up that a welcome blast of cool night air flooded the kitchen. When he turned back around, Taako had a plate ready on the counter, and was holding up a fork. 

_“I expect compliments.”_

Magnus wiped his hands and headed over, the narrow kitchen a welcome excuse to stand very close to Taako as Magnus leaned back against the sink and took the bite he offered. Taako slid the fork out of Magnus’s mouth slowly, metal grazing his lips. 

_“Good?”_ Taako asked as Magnus's eyes widened. 

_“Amazing.”_

Taako glanced down and smiled a little shyly before recovering his cool and stretching a leg across the narrow kitchen to knock his knee against Magnus’s. _“Well, there you go. That’s the easiest thing I know. Just keep, like, five things in your fridge from now on and you can feed yourself.”_

Taako’s skin was flushed and a few beads of sweat sparkled at his hairline; Magnus knew he was staring again, but he didn’t care. 

_“What would you do without me?”_ Taako joked, his voice soft. 

_“I don’t know,”_ Magnus said, meaning it.

Magnus stares at Taako, now, and Taako stares too, brow furrowing as Magnus slowly falls back against the sink. Kravitz takes the folder from Magnus’s hands before he drops it, and flips a few pages ahead, past Lucretia’s detailed explanation of her modified blindfold technique, and starts to read aloud. “ _Hypnosis seems to be holding. Researcher approached Subject A on campus, claiming to need directions, and there were no observed behaviors that would suggest recognition of Researcher. Also observed Subject A and Subject C walk past each other in a hallway with no sign of recognition._ ” 

What Kravitz says next is a whisper: “Fuck, you two. I’m so sorry.”

They’re absolutely still, and then Magnus looks over at Kravitz, eyes wide with a wordless request for permission or reassurance—Kravitz nods for both, and Magnus steps forward and wraps an arm around Taako’s hips.

As Magnus touches him, Taako feels a familiar disorientation, and then the memory snaps into place with blinding relief like a dislocated shoulder: he and Magnus are lying half-asleep, in a dark place that smells like cut grass, and Magnus is very close to him. 

They’re in Magnus’ bed, in his first apartment, after Magnus somehow carefully shoved the plate of pasta Taako made onto the counter behind them while reaching an arm around Taako’s back and pulling him into a sudden kiss. Taako pressed closer, pushing up Magnus’s shirt, cool cotton brushing against his knuckles and his palms against warm skin. He wanted every bit of that warmth, and Magnus shivered when his bare back hit the rim of the sink behind him just as Taako’s teeth grazed over his bottom lip, an electric chill in the humid apartment—and then Taako threw off his own shirt, leaning in for another clumsy kiss that was all tongue, and took Magnus’ hand to pull him into the bedroom.

_“What would you do without me?”_

_“I don’t know.”_

Then? Magnus dipping Avi for a kiss while Taako small-clapped on the reunion show bleachers. Then— _"I’m too young to be suburban,"_ Taako complained as he and Magnus toured another beige new-build condo in the subdivision closest to their new job, and Magnus laughed and offered to build him a house like it was buying dinner. And now?

As the fog in his head clears, Taako stares through this moment to an identical one beneath: Magnus backed against the counter and his eyes a question.

While Taako looks at him, Magnus runs his hand gently over Taako’s shirt and curls it around the back of his neck, tentative but steady, tracing his thumb in reassurance behind Taako’s ear just as he starts to feel out of himself. Taako shivers at the press of his fingertips like he can feel the broken glass of Wonderland in his touch. 

“What—what about before? The second time, I mean.”

“Taako, I think we wanted each other then because we were both missing the same things. But we got it all back, now, and I want more. If you do.” Magnus looks over at Kravitz, who is pretending to flip through a folder he’s read twice on the other side of the counter. “If you both do.” 

Taako reaches out to grab the hem of Magnus’s shirt in a tight fist, and then looks over his shoulder. “Krav?” he whispers hoarsely, Magnus’s breath close on his neck.

As Taako says his name and Kravitz looks up at them both—Taako’s lips a little swollen, Magnus’s hands low and eager on his hips, and both of them staring at Kravitz—Kravitz swallows hard, and then slowly walks around the kitchen island and reaches for Taako’s hand. 

“It’s ok, Taako.” 

For a moment Taako flinches as his body recognizes the feeling of breaking through an invisible barrier, but as he lunges forward, on the other side is a still and clear place.

In their second kiss Magnus smells like a fresh shower and cut cedar underneath. The finger he traces across Taako’s jaw leaves a faint stick of resin, smelling of forests that take lifetimes to grow, and his lips are a little dry, catching as Taako presses him back against the edge of the sink. 

Taako feels pulled close to the youngest version of this moment, with no idea how much he was about to lose, and find again, and how much more, even, was possible. 

Taako tugs at Kravitz’s hand to pull him close, and Kravitz leans in to press a gentle kiss to Taako’s neck. Magnus crooks his head and leans in, too, and at the feeling of both of their lips chasing up his neck Taako lets out a moan that sounds like he might evaporate. 

Magnus leans back for a moment, eyes heavy. As Kravitz kisses Taako hungrily, in a kitchen Taako now realizes Magnus built for him, and Magnus starts sucking a tender spot on his neck, pulling their hips tight enough that Taako can feel how much he wants all of this—Taako feels complete in a way he doesn’t recognize as his knees go weak.

As they fall into bed, Taako feels Magnus twice on his skin: once now as Magnus kisses down his stomach, and once from the past when they lay a few inches from each other in the dark, hands by their sides awkward with want. A bead of sweat ran down Magnus’ neck, and Taako caught it with his finger and tasted it on impulse. Magnus’s eyes lowered as he leaned forward to brush his lips against Taako’s shoulder, the gentle breath that chased them making Taako’s wet skin go cold.

“Are you sure?” Magnus asks now, coming back up to kiss the same spot on his shoulder.

The moment doubles again: Magnus very close to him then, certain they had all the time in the world, and Magnus now running a slow thumb over his hipbone. 

Taako flops on his back and looks over to where Kravitz is undoing the last button on his cuff, sighing impatiently. “Krav, bed, now. Whatever you’ve got on stays on.” 

Magnus looks down at Taako, and then over at Kravitz, with his most private half-smile, familiar now—

—the rising hum of crickets outside. Taako bit his lip to hide a goofy grin, and Magnus whispered _what do you want, anything for you_. Heels digging into the sheets, and he tasted himself in that smile as he pulled Magnus up into a long kiss—

When Taako feels two sets of hands on him, he thinks he’s still stuck in memory until he opens his eyes and Magnus is pressed against his hip and Kravitz is slipping his tongue into Taako’s open mouth. Magnus wanders his hand lower, fingertips catching between elastic lace and hot skin, and Taako comes all the way back to the present between the men he loves.

 

When Kravitz wakes up a few hours later, there’s a light on down the hallway and Taako is gone, leaving a warm space between him and Magnus. Kravitz gets up, throws on a shirt, and walks into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes. 

Taako is shuffling papers on the counter in the low light, and Kravitz looks for any haze in his eyes as he kisses his cheek. Instead, Taako is calm, and there’s something more settled in the way he carries himself—a question gone from his body. Kravitz leans forward to help him put the folders back together.

Taako looks over. “So. That was fucking incredible for ‘cha boy, but uh—you’re really ok with this?”

Kravitz thinks back to a windy day on the Balance patio, Magnus tucking a curl behind Taako’s ear by instinct—how Taako lit up with a small glow, and then looked at Kravitz to see if he should snuff it out. If Taako can die 13 times and still be alive, it seems so easy for him to love two people at once, while they love him too. 

Kravitz nods. “After everything—I think I _like_ that it’s not just me and you. We’ll never be lonely, in this.”

Taako knocks him with a hip. “Always said you had a sappy streak.” 

As they gather the last of Lucretia’s notes, Taako grabs for the empty box and then freezes.

“Did you see this?” he asks, pulling out a small card folded out of Lucretia’s IPRE letterhead. Kravitz shakes his head as Taako flicks it open, eyes widening. 

“Kravitz—she’s talking about new work. And she wants your help.” Taako reads the address at the bottom and wrinkles his nose. “Really? ‘Mountain View’? Well, Lucretia’s consistent, at least.”

“California?” Kravitz grabs for the note. “Are you serious?”

 

Taako leans backward in his chair, eyebrows raised as he looks at Lucretia. “Are you really talking about immortality? That’s some comic book shit, even for you.”

“Taako, I know you’re not one for details,”—Taako rolls his eyes—“but they matter quite a bit in this case. Not immortality—the ability for the soul to survive outside the body, and we’ll build better bodies for it to come back to.”

She pulls up a few schematics on her laptop, and slides it across her desk. It’s a glistening shell, joints and pistons hidden beneath human-like curves, with glassy eyes that imitate inner life by reflecting outside light in a way that makes Taako shiver like the decoy soul did.

“This is a fucking robot, Lucretia.”

“Mmm. We prefer Corporeal Upgrade. But, details.”

Lucretia is backed by an orange sunset heavy as an oil painting, now, and it feels like there’s less air in the room. Taako shrinks back into his chair as far as he can, worrying Kravitz’s hand with his thumb. Kravitz feels a tug in the other side of his vision, and when he looks over Magnus is very still, staring at a metal shell that would experience none of the accidents of a limited body: death, memory, or love. Kravitz thinks of Magnus broken on concrete, stalled on ice, how light came back to his eyes long after life did, as Taako leaned a cheek into his hand on a day that wasn’t quite winter or spring. Kravitz remembers the catch of Taako’s breath under his and Magnus’s hands, an accident of the body he would give up lifetimes for. He reaches his other hand out for Magnus; Magnus starts and then laces their fingers together, nails digging together into the leather.

Lucretia notices, and her voice softens. “It may be self-serving, but I take some small comfort in the knowledge that you all found each other. It’s good to see you again.”

Taako straightens. “Lucretia, you can take credit for our deaths, and that’s it.”

Out of all her notes, there was one page Kravitz read twice: Lup’s death a departure noted to the second with no arrival, the rest of the page blank except a short note in the margin— _Experiment concluded after an unforeseen outcome. Summary to come later; accuracy demands a dispassionate observer. Forgive me._

Lucretia winces, but Taako’s eyes are narrow beside him, and so Kravitz says nothing.

When no-one speaks, Lucretia’s voice slips back into commanding smoothness.

“Kravitz, I asked you here because my employer understands that the public needs time to catch up with the possible, and we’ve decided to start a grassroots campaign, if you will. I owe you a huge debt after what you did for Taako, so I put in a recommendation.” Lucretia gestures towards the glass windows beside them, still crowded by a few staring assistants. “You can see that you all are already heroes of a sort, here. The work you did is of invaluable importance, and the world deserves to know about it, and to understand that it’s possible for them, too.”

As Kravitz catches the wide eyes outside the window, her assistants turn around quickly, holding up notebooks. 

“I know I’ve given you a lot to think about. I don’t want an answer now, Kravitz, but I will say that this would be a very rewarding assignment. I can make sure you’ll talk to whoever you want at one of the most influential companies in the world, and we can guarantee the success of your work. Call me when you’ve made a decision.”

 

As they drive away in silence, Taako searches for the closest cheap diner, and they pull up to the kind of worn-down place where it’s a coin-flip if the coffee is burnt or the best in town. Taako slides into the glittery vinyl booth after Magnus, waving Kravitz in beside him as he stands halfway up to flag down a waitress. “Pancakes, overeasy eggs, bacon, don’t burn the fuck out of it—coffee for one of these handsome dudes, and tea for the other.”

Lucretia’s offer in his head, Kravitz stays quiet, shifting the menu on the table in front of him. Outside, a lone car passes with a hollow rush.

Taako speaks first. “Krav. She wants a press release; you’re going to give her a novel.”

Kravitz and Magnus both start, looking at Taako, and then each other.

“Are you sure, Taako?” Kravitz asks.

“Yeah, my dude, I’m sure.” Then, quietly, “Keeping this a secret just keeps us stuck in it. And she’s right about one thing—if they’re going ahead with this, people deserve to know the truth.”

Magnus nods slowly as Taako runs a comforting thumb over the scruff on his chin. “So, just for the sake of argument—pitch it to me, Kravitz.” Taako winks. “Your book, I mean.”

Kravitz looks down at the table, picturing the first page of Lucretia’s journal. _Subjects A &B: there’s something about these two, as if you can see through their skin to whatever light inside of us makes us alive, and you hope the light inside you is like that, too._ He starts slow, but as conviction speeds up his voice, Taako smiles fondly.

“I guess—how death is for most people, and how it is for you. How you and I fell in love, and died, and came back to each other. How you saved the people you—we—love, Taako.” 

Magnus reaches under the table for the hand Kravitz has resting on Taako’s thigh, and laces their fingers together. Taako swallows hard at the added warmth on his skin, playing it off with a casual tone. 

“ _How to Save the World in 7 Days_. _Dummies’ Guide to Death._ ” 

Kravitz struggles to hide a skeptical lift of his eyebrow. “We can workshop that.” 

Magnus snorts, and Taako rolls his eyes.

“Gotta say, I’m kind of into the idea of being your muse. Mags, how do you feel about inspiring some art? I always thought that jawline of yours would do it, but this works, too.”

Magnus looks seriously across the booth. “I trust you, Kravitz. I’m in.”

It's getting darker outside, and the neon sign outside the scratched window flips on, throwing blue light across their faces.

Taako nods. “Fuck it. Let’s do this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to @ShikiMagica and @ShinyKipp for giving me some great, thoughtful notes on this chapter. Please go check out their work!
> 
> On a sappy note, this is the first piece of writing I've finished in a while, for many reasons, and it has meant a lot to share it with everyone here. Thank you very much for reading, and happy Candlenights to all. :)


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